Adam's eyes snapped open. A white, concrete ceiling with long, fluorescent lights stretched above him.
He shot to his feet and looked around. He was in a concrete corridor, also lined with those long lights. It seemed to go on forever. The walls were stark white, scrawled with crimson numbers and words. Here and there, crimson pipes ran along them, all set against a crimson floor.
He looked down at himself. He was dressed in a black, high-necked cotton shirt and a long black woolen coat.
Adam's eyes were wide open, his face a mask of pure terror and dread. He spun around, frantically scanning every direction.
"No!... No!... Damn it!" he muttered, his voice tight with anxiety.
Suddenly, a piercing, distorted scream tore through the silence, sending a shiver down his spine. His eyes flew wide open, and he snapped his head toward the source of the sound. Something was watching him from the far end of the passage.
It was hard to make out from this distance. All he could see was a massive, black shape. He couldn't discern any details, yet a fresh wave of pure terror washed over him. It was as if some deep, primal part of him already knew what it was.
Another deafening scream erupted, even louder than the first. Then, the dark, shadowy mass began charging toward him at an impossible speed.
Adam stood frozen, staring right at it. His whole body trembled, his mouth and eyes agape in horror. For a few heartbeats, he was completely paralyzed. Then, instinct took over. He whipped around in the opposite direction and broke into a desperate sprint.
The thing was gaining on him fast, its screams tearing through the air, accompanied by the sickening sounds of shattering and crushing. Adam didn't dare look back. He just kept running straight ahead, pouring everything he had into it.
But for some reason, he wasn't getting far. He glanced down. It was like he was in a video set to slow motion. His own movements were sluggish and delayed. Yet, the black thing's speed was insane, unreal.
With every footfall the creature advanced, it plunged the space around it into a terrifying halo of absolute darkness, its distorted shrieks echoing from within the void.
It closed in on him.
The thing was a massive, seething heap of burned and mangled human body parts—eyes, mouths, arms, and legs—all fused together in a chaotic jumble. The eyes oozed a thick, red fluid. The mouths were the source of those twisted screams, all crying out in unison.
It kept coming. Its countless charred arms and legs were being crushed under its own immense weight with a gruesome crunch, but it instantly replaced them with new, twitching limbs from its ever-shifting form.
Only a few steps now separated Adam from the monstrous thing.
"NOOO!... NOOOOO!" Adam screamed.
The creature loomed directly over him, its massive maw gaping open. Inside wasn't a throat, but a writhing mass of giant human teeth, eyes, mouths, and grasping arms. Four huge, blackened arms shot out from within the chasm, reaching for Adam, who was still trying to run in that strange, slow-motion crawl.
Adam's gaze was locked on the four charred, twisted arms closing in on him as he moved in that agonizingly slow run. Both he and the monster were screaming at the top of their lungs.
The arms seized him, clamping down and holding him firmly in place. The creature's maw stretched wider and it began to swallow him whole. His head disappeared first, then his upper body.
Adam squeezed his eyes shut. The monster's screaming stopped, but his own piercing shrieks continued. A few seconds passed before he realized his own screaming had stopped, too.
He slowly opened his eyes and looked around. He was back where he started. The same crimson floor, the same white concrete walls with the red numbers and pipes, the same white ceiling with the long, fluorescent lights.
A faint, disbelieving smile flickered across Adam's terrified face. The sound of his ragged panting was loud in the silence as he frantically scanned his surroundings. But the smile vanished as quickly as it came, replaced once more by pure terror when he heard it—the same distorted scream from before the monster's first approach. He looked in the same direction.
The creature was standing there, at the far end of the corridor, exactly as it had been just moments before.
"Nooo!... Goddammit!... Please, stop!... I'm begging you!"
"All of you,just stop!"
Then, he heard the same terrifying scream, and the monstrosity began charging toward him once again, with the same insane speed.
This time, he stopped begging and just ran in the opposite direction, just like before. He sprinted in a straight line.
It was like the whole nightmare was resetting. But this time, Adam was fast. His movements weren't slowed down.
That desperate, fleeting smile returned to his face as he noticed he had put a significant distance between himself and the creature. He could still hear its deafening roars, but he was pulling ahead.
After running what felt like a long way, the crimson floor began to soften beneath his feet.
The farther he ran, the softer and more malleable the crimson ground became. It was like trying to run through thick mud. It gradually began to slow him down.
His feet started sinking deeply into the ground. It was like running in a swamp. First, his ankles disappeared, then his knees. Now, his entire lower body was submerged in the floor.
Moving became a struggle. He used both hands, clawing and grabbing to try and pull himself forward, but it was useless. The floor was like quicksand made of that same red substance, sucking him back down every time he tried to move. His body sank deeper.
The distorted screams grew louder. Adam looked back. The monstrosity was back and had closed most of the distance. Adam's own screams returned, a raw, mindless sound. He wasn't thinking of anything anymore, just a primal, desperate need to get away.
The crimson ground had risen to his shoulders. His arms, now coated in the red substance, strained and pulled uselessly against the thick mire.
Just as Adam was struggling to move, the monster's screaming suddenly stopped.
The exhausted Adam stopped too, his body heaving with ragged, desperate gasps for air. He slowly turned his head to look behind him.
The monster was gone. It had vanished.
He whipped his head around, scanning every direction. That faint, desperate smile began to twitch at the corners of his lips again.
But the smile was cut short by a single drop of liquid falling from the ceiling.
Adam's panting stopped. With a slow, dawning horror, his gaze drifted upward.
The thing was clinging to the ceiling.
Adam screamed, and in that instant, the monster's shrieks erupted once more.
It slowly opened its maw, and the four blackened arms emerged again, reaching down toward Adam, who was still sinking gradually into the crimson earth beneath him. Only his head remained above the surface now.
His head was directly between the four grasping arms. They were just about to seize him when, at the very last second, he was pulled completely under the crimson floor.
Everything was dark. Adam opened his eyes again, only to find himself back in the same place. Without a second thought, he spun around and ran in the opposite direction of where the monster always stood. But he tripped and fell hard.
He twisted around to see what had caught his foot. It was a hand, slick with blood, gripping his ankle.
His eyes flew wide open. He scrambled, kicking his leg, trying to wrench his foot free. The hand held on with a vise-like grip, but he finally managed to break loose. He scuttled backward, crab-walking until his back hit the cold, white wall behind him.
Just as he thought he was safe, another hand shot out from the wall, clutching at his clothes. Then another, and another. Soon, a multitude of hands emerged, seizing his arms and torso, pinning him firmly against the wall.
Something began to rise from the floor in front of him. A human form, dyed completely crimson, crawled slowly toward him. As it moved, the crimson color began to fade from its body, revealing the details underneath.
It was a woman in her thirties with short black hair and pale white skin, horribly disfigured. Where her eyes should have been were only dark, hollow sockets, with trails of dried and fresh blood staining her cheeks. More blood trickled from the corners of her lips. She was wearing a long black wool coat over a white shirt and black pants, all of it torn and stained with deep, dark blood.
While Adam struggled against the hands holding him, the woman kept crawling toward him.
She reached him. Even without eyes, she was directing her gaze right at his face. A pained, choked whisper escaped her, as if she were drowning in her own blood, her lips barely moving:
"W...w...why...? W...why?!"
Adam had turned his face away from hers, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.
"I... I'm sorry!... I'm s-sorry!"
Bony hands grabbed his head and wrenched it forward to face her. Other hands pried his eyes open, forcing him to look.
The woman's face moved inches from his. His terrified gaze was locked directly onto her hollow, bleeding eye sockets.
"AAHHHH!... I'M SORRY!"
"PLEASE!...NOOOOOO!"
Adam jolted upright. His eyes were wide, his mouth hung open. He was gasping for air, his entire body drenched in sweat, trembling with terror. He looked around, wild-eyed.
He was back in the forest where he'd been before.
"Open!... Open, damn it!"
He shouted loudly.
The black screen with its golden edges materialized in front of him. He was back in reality. A wave of shaky relief washed over him, and he collapsed to the ground, completely drained of the strength to stand.
---
A few hours passed with him lying motionless in the same spot. During that time, he noticed the forest around him was scarred with evidence of a fire. The pond had widened, its edges blackened by what looked like a powerful explosion. The strange, yellow, flammable—and apparently explosive—water was gone.
Adam scanned his surroundings again, and a memory surfaced—something he had meant to do at daybreak. The explosion and losing consciousness had cost him precious time. It was something he needed to do before he could even think about resting.
It took him a while to calm down and process everything that had happened. Finally, his breathing steadied and his panting subsided.
He pushed himself to his feet, using the charred trees for support. The blast had incinerated his walking stick and the spare wood he'd gathered. He started moving toward the place where the creature's corpse had been.
He had to go and see what had happened to it. Had the predators returned to claim the rest of their prey, or had they left it for good?
Adam reached the corpse's location. As he got closer and saw the torn-open stomach and the dried blood, he was instantly flashbacked to the woman from his nightmare. His heart began to hammer in his chest, his body trembled, and a wave of nausea hit him. He staggered back a few steps; the image of that woman was seared into his mind.
He stayed like that for several minutes, frozen. Then, he reminded himself: It was just a nightmare. It's over. He managed to reclaim a sliver of calm and forced himself to look back toward the corpse.
The creature's body was still there, now emitting a foul, rotting smell. But there were new tracks in front of the torn-open stomach. He had wiped away the old ones to see if the predators would return.
And they had. That meant he was probably in the middle of those predators' hunting grounds.
He carefully examined the massive carcass and traced the path from which the new tracks came. Sure enough, he found two distinct trails leading away from the body. The trails in front of him had the fewest footprints. He compared the two.
The right-hand path had the fewest tracks. He knew that route wouldn't be free of predators, but it was still better than staying in the heart of their territory. He set off down the same path. With every step he took away from the creature's carcass, Adam grew more and more cautious.
Night was beginning to fall. He gathered some dry wood he found and stacked it into a cone shape, making absolutely sure it wasn't contaminated with any residue of the yellow substance from the pond.
He rubbed two sticks together in his hands. A spark appeared, which he carefully nurtured and placed into the woodpile. It caught successfully. He moved closer to the fire, soaking in its warmth. This time, the heat was pleasant and comforting, not searing and explosive like before.
The last of the daylight faded gradually. There was no moon or stars in the sky; it was a pitch-black void. The forest became intensely dark. If not for the fire he had built, visibility would have been zero.
But then, suddenly, the trees began to glow with a beautiful, shimmering azure and lapis lazuli light. The glow wasn't strong enough to illuminate everything, but it made the place feel less terrifying and strangely beautiful.
Adam sat near the fire, his gaze fixed on the beautiful lapis lazuli glow. He stayed awake the entire night, without a moment of sleep. He kept opening the black screen, only to close it again after a few moments.
The truth was, Adam couldn't remember the last time he had slept before the night of the explosion. He never slept.