One morning, Zack heard the creak of boots, the rustle of coats, and the heavy clang of axes against his door.
Some people were trying to break in, and drag Zack into the arms of a professional, they calimed.
Zack stood in the center of his room, calm and smiling like a madman.
His door remained untouched, despite the relentless swings of the firemen's blades.
"What is this door made of?" the fire chief muttered between gasps.
Zack smirked. "Not wood. My will."
And he remembered: The real woman who had once protected him from a monster made of axes. They were in a roadside motel: her, Zack, and a cheap wooden door. The creature had battered it with everything it had. But she whispered a spell, and the door held fast, suspended by a dozen floating needles.
That day, magic held the world together.
Now, it was Zack's turn.
He channeled the force, not into pins, but into pressure. The forcefield surged from his core, solidifying the door with a strength that wasn't physical. It was a belief, forged into armor.
He turned to the window. His stare cracked the glass before shattering it into pieces.
Zack dove from the second floor, encased in a translucent dome of force that shimmered with blue heat. He stopped one foot above the pavement. Hovering one foot away from death, thanks to the translucent dome.
He landed without a scratch, nor the thought of how he defied nature.
The dome retracted as Zack ran into the darkness of the night.
He didn't know where he was going or what was ahead, only that he couldn't stay. Because the farther people were from the truth, the more dangerous they became for themselves and everyone else around.
Zack ran until his legs gave out.
When the drizzle began to fall, he found shelter beneath the fractured bones of a forgotten shack. The rusted tin roof wheezed under the weight of the wind, offering little protection, but Zack didn't care. He was far beyond such concerns.
The sudden shift in temperature didn't register as odd to someone trapped in a delusion. But to one cursed with heightened perception—an eye for detail trained by trauma—the air was different.
It felt alive, like a beast on the hunt.
The cold didn't just bite—it pressed. Heavy. Viscous. As if the atmosphere had thickened into syrup, resisting every motion, fighting every breath.
Zack's shield appeared before this weather and declined to leave his side. A shimmer of energy, nearly imperceptible unless one knew to look. It had withstood crushing doors, piercing axes, even a fall from two stories.
But this?
This was something else.
He tried to take a step, only one, and nearly collapsed. Each movement bled more energy than the last as his breath turned to steam, while his muscles screamed under the pressure.
'No. He wouldn't yield.' Zack convinced himself. 'If this were a game of wills, I shall win.'
He had been given everything. Strength. Protection. Favor from the unknown. The very thought that something could overpower his will was intolerable.
Zack forced himself forward.
One step.
Then another.
The drain was immense, but something—something—topped him up, refilling what was lost—a cycle of pain and power.
Then came the voice.
"Power...
"Such power...
"In such a puny body!"
The laughter echoed in Zack's mind like nails scraping glass. Zack flinched as something deep inside him recoiled. His energy reserves shriveled. The flow stopped.
"Who are you?!" he shouted into the dark.
He fought the absurdity. Struggled against the growing pressure in his chest. Against the hunger that gnawed at him—not his own, but the voice's. A bottomless craving for flesh, fear, and soul.
"I am superior," he spat. To the voice. To the storm. To himself.
"I am the boy who would live."
A memory struck him like lightning, faint, blurred by time and pain. His parents. A blast. Screams. Heat. Then nothing. A dream, he had thought. Or a nightmare.
But now…?
"The boy who lived," he said, stronger.
A ghostly hand shot from the void—clawed fingers outstretched—only to freeze inches from his skull. Suspended in air, trembling.
Zack took a step.
The air still pushed back. Still syrup-thick and filled with hate that was almost palpable.
In time, the resistance waned. The voice faltered.
Because Zack's will was stronger.
He reached deeper into the realm of possibility, warping the fabric of reality to align with his belief. And reality bent.
"Mine… mine, MINE!" The voice shrieked in fury. Dozens of ghostly hands swarmed from all sides, clawing at him, piling upon each other in a grotesque mimicry of desperation.
Zack stood firm, yet his body trembled and muscles strained. His shield absorbed the brunt of the attack, each strike slamming into it with a soundless pulse.
Yet it too held.
"My, my... mine!" A new voice cut through the chaos—an echo outside of his head.
It rang in the real world, spoken by someone present close by—someone with lungs, and breath, and weight.
Zack realized he wasn't alone anymore. Not in this street. Nor amongst the crazy ones who could see the supernatural.
BOOM!
A massive explosion erupted two streets down, sending a shockwave that shattered the ghostly hands and thinned the heavy, viscous air.
Zack gasped as he could move freely again, yet instead of fleeing, he ran toward the chaos.
For the first time, he didn't shrink from the unseen side of reality. He embraced it.
"Out of fame, not out of luck," he told himself. "This story is still mine. I will live to tell it."
Was it a story of redemption—to clear his name, reveal the truth, and reclaim the spotlight?
Or something darker?
To dive deeper into the mysteries of existence, fame be damned?
He didn't know. And for once, he didn't care.
Zack bolted full speed toward the explosion, but something was wrong.
Every time he turned a corner, he found himself running the other way.
Two streets down, always two streets away.
Again and again, he looped, like the world itself was repelling him.
That's when he heard it.
A melody.
Sweet. Faint. But beneath the music, a hidden voice: "Run away... run away..."
Zack shut his eyes, filtered the sound, and separated the message from the melody. Once he tuned it out, he broke the loop, and the path cleared.
He followed the residual heat and shattered silence, turning into the darkest alley he'd ever seen.
There, in the gloom, an old man ricocheted between the walls like a rubber ball—graceful, impossible, alive. He dodged ghostly hands erupting from concrete with a timing that defied physics, slipping through attacks even a seasoned soldier couldn't anticipate.
How? It was a question, too little, too late.
All Zack knew was that it was all bonkers.
And it only got worse...
From the wall of a nearby building, a cannonball emerged—solid, roaring, yet passing through the structure as if made of smoke. It looked real. Felt real. Yet it moved like a ghost.
The old man landed on it midair, crouched like a surfer, then launched himself off the cannonball, clearing the swarm of hands in one deft move. His coat flared like a cape as he disappeared into the shadows the monster created.
Zack, mesmerized, forgot something important: The hands had only left him alone because the old man had stolen their attention, and now that their prey had escaped, they turned back to him.
The air thickened again—no, solidified.
Zack tried to run, but his limbs felt like they were trapped in cement.
Himebut, absorbingfelt after blow, and he could feel it, unable to move weakening; Fractures in the energy—a soundless hum of strain.
Was it because he'd doubted himself?
Because he let awe replace belief?
Zack crushed the thought.
'No. No time for questions. Only action.' He convinced himself.
He opened his mouth to shout, to declare something—anything—that might reignite his will.
Before he could, a whistle cut the air as another cannonball tore through the alley. This one aimed straight for him. And riding atop it, coat flapping, smile gleaming—was the old man.
The old man kicked the cannonball midair, redirecting it into the swarm of ghostly hands.
BOOM!
A shattering wave exploded across the alley, vaporizing the spectral limbs into a million glowing motes that swirled like fireflies, momentarily lighting up the darkness.
Zack watched, stunned, as the old man landed light on his feet, the pavement beneath him sinking slightly, preparing to launch him away again. He had time to escape. Zack saw it. The ground bent with stored momentum, ready to spring him in any direction.
Yet he didn't take it. Instead, the old man turned and shoved Zack hard, as two ghostly hands emerged from the ground exactly where he'd been standing.
Zack flew through the air, slammed into the road, rolled, and hit a wall that turned soft at the last second, absorbing the impact like putty. He winced, dazed, blinking rapidly.
Through the warping haze of light and motion, he saw it: Two hands grabbed the old man, a snap like thunder that followed up by dead silence.
The old man's body hung limp, broken clean in two. And with that, reality itself tore open.
A gaping maw ripped through the space above the corpse, jaws lined with jagged, spike-like teeth. Its flesh bubbled with blood and bile, drooling onto the pavement in thick, sizzling globs.
It didn't have eyes. Yet it stared.
It didn't have nostrils, but Zack felt its sniffling nostril hairs.
Its amusement was palpable.
It's chuckle—horifying.
Whether the saliva was acidic or a condensed form of corrupted reality itself, Zack couldn't tell. Still, wherever the drops landed, the ground melted, the concrete dissolving into slurry, as if this creature's existence rejected the laws of nature.
Zack couldn't move. The binding spell still held him fast, coiled around his will like barbed wire.
He couldn't fight this. He couldn't win.
He—
"Duck!" A voice, sharp and urgent, cut through the fog of panic.
Zack dropped, instinctively. The spell holding him wavered just enough to obey.
A blur of movement shot past him—a woman, her skin inked with glowing tattoos, rode a cannonball like a comet straight into the creature's mouth.
BOOM!
The impact rocked the beast's jaw, pushing it back. Zack expected a moment of compassion—maybe a glance, a question: Are you okay? But the woman barely looked at him.
She marched straight to the dismembered old man, cocked her leg back, and kicked his upper torso toward his lower half.
Both halves flew through a window, shattering glass and crashing into a house. Inside, two children woke screaming to nightmares they'd never forget.
"Oops," the woman muttered with a shrug, turned back to the monster, and charged.
Like the old man, she moved with purpose, somehow predicting where the ghostly hands would appear next. But unlike him, she wasn't fast enough.
The ghostly hands caught her.
The monster learned—adapting, evolving.
Its hands passed through her body like smoke, wrapping her midair, holding her suspended like a marionette while it sniffed the space around her, searching for its next prey.
As its focus drifted, Zack felt it again. That gaze. An unquenching hunger for flesh—his flesh.
With no one between it and him, he became the sole focus of its hunger.
Between his last moments, Zack's mind drifts away, spotting a teenage girl from the corner of his eye, tiptoeing closer to the monster.
She was dressed entirely in pink, clutching a tiny pink handbag under her arm as if her life depended on it.
Zack didn't think much of her. For one, he couldn't understand why girls carried such useless handbags. They could barely fit anything inside. Why not buy a decently sized bag, one that could hold a phone, instead of shoving it into skin-tight pockets designed for fashion, not function?
Death loomed over him, and yet, here he was, thinking about purses.
He might've considered that absurd, if not for the subtle presence of someone else, soothing his aura just enough to allow such idle thoughts.
Little did Zack realize that the one behind that calming effect knew precisely what he was doing.
The teenager dropped something through the broken window—the same one the tattooed woman had kicked the dismembered old man through.
A plume of pink smoke erupted from inside, followed by four terrified screams, quickly muffled.
Zack winced.
He hoped the family had simply passed out, and whatever that pink stuff was, it was filling the house with some sort of anesthetic gas.
"Pink?" Zack frowned. "Who in their right mind would use pink in a covert op?"
The frown lingered. It didn't even occur to Zack to question why he was so fixated on the color. Not until the voice barged back into his thoughts, sharp and annoyed.
"Run." The voice commanded again as Zack ignored it.
"This was your doing?" he asked, questioning the presence rather than following its life-saving instructions.
The entity behind the voice didn't have direct control. Somehow, Zack had found a flaw in its technique, and now, instead of panicking or obeying, he was interrogating it, so the voice switched tactics.
Using the age-old "off-and-on" method, like rebooting a frozen computer, it cut the soothing effect. Instantly, Zack's heart pounded, mind spiraling in terror at the monster looming over him.
A second later, the calm returned, like a floodlight clicking on in the void.
Zack's panic gave way to razor-sharp focus.
"Run." The word stung, carrying layers of meaning, urgency, and strategy.
Zack understood the nuance: what he had to do, how he had to do it, and why it mattered.
Meanwhile, the teenager—who now, somehow, seemed smaller than him—pressed a sticker onto the ground, bouncing slightly to test the floor's elasticity. She then shoved her hand into the sidewalk, tugging it upward at an angle.
She pulled out a bundle of rolled-up stickers, placed them carefully into the bent sidewalk, angled them, and launched.
Zack assumed the stickers were for him, to free him from the binding spell, but the rubberized sidewalk curved sharply around a lamppost, arcing with perfect precision.
The bundle soared right past him and slammed into the tattooed woman, still suspended midair in the monster's grip.
Several sparks of light severed the link between the monster and the tattooed woman, freeing her from her suspended prison. But before anyone could celebrate, the elastic sidewalk snapped back, like a cruel joke, wrapping around the teenager and trapping her in an unforgiving embrace of bricks and cement.
The tattooed woman barely dodged two spectral hands, only to be caught by a hundred more.
The monster had been toying with them all along.
Maybe the old man had been the only exception—the only one who could predict the monster's moves before it even made them.
But he was gone, and now, without their strongest warrior, they were just playthings.
"Run!" the voice cried again, seizing on the monster's brief distraction—just enough to loosen its grip on Zack's body, just enough to give him one last chance.
'All that sacrifice... for a useless kid?' Zack cursed himself. 'Or was it a trick? A coordinated distraction to get me out of danger? No. I'm the reason he's dead. It's my fault. And now... Now, it was up to him to do something. Even if that "something" meant throwing himself into the fire. Even if it meant dying with their doomed efforts.
Zack sprinted toward the monster, questions and doubts storming through his mind.
He swung his arms wildly, trying to extend the shield farther away from his body, in hopes it would protect the ones who risked everything for him.
"Wrong side, kid." The voice sighed, but couldn't redirect him.
Zack didn't care. He was determined and ready to sacrifice himself. All he wanted was to land one final blow. It didn't matter if it was insignificant.
It didn't matter if it failed.
He just wanted the monster to feel his wrath. To acknowledge him.
Prove—if only for a moment—that he wasn't worthless. That he wasn't just a coward they died for.
A couple of meters away, the stench hit. Thick. Suffocating. Wrong.
Not the smell of rot! This was ancient. Older than decay or time. As if something had been decomposing for centuries, long before the world even realized it had died.
Zack gagged, his throat convulsing, and fingers clawing at the pavement slick with blood—his blood.
The lights flickered and the walls twitched, like they were breathing.
The pressure thickened, pressing down on reality, stretching it like a plastic bag over a flame, and then he heard the screeches. Not one. Not a hundred. Thousands...
Tiny, gasping wails. Shrieks of the newly born and howls of the dying; All stitched together into a single, deafening, inhuman cacophony.
The windows cracked, buckling under the weight of the sound.
The glass shivered like it wanted to run before it was too late, before it became too real.
From this unholy cacophony, it emerged. Shredding through the hues of reality.
The air around Zack peeled open, like meat torn from bone.
Reality split in wet, ragged flaps, and behind it, a body that should have never existed; a monster stitched with the hands of its victims.
And it had... So. Many. Hands!
———<>||<>——— N.P. ———<>||<>———