Physical space began to stretch and distort as footsteps fell heavily, soft echoes rang from the empty walls of the alley, stretching in length before his eyes. Traveling an infinite number of distances to the end, a goal never reached as he stumbled aimlessly and alone with no coherent memory of how he got here in the first place.

Vaguely, he recalled a voice, synthetic yet soothing.

“Do you ever feel lost?”

“Do you question your reality?”

“Are you prone to frequent feelings of sadness or hopelessness?”

Where did this memory come from? The voice spoke to him, but he didn’t recognise it as anyone he had encountered before.

“What’s happening?” His breathing become laboured as he continued along the stretching pathway, “Who are you?”

A faceless voice emanated from the walls. “We’re here to help you.”

Gareth stumbled over his feet as the voice spoke. What did that mean, help him? The alleyway had begun to spin as his pace slowed to a stop… How did he get here? Where was ‘here,’ anyway?

“No… leave me alone,” he gasped as he attempted to steady himself against the contracting wall. The voice had fallen silent as the dizzying effects of the alleyway had caused him to quickly collapse; somehow, this place was only habitable for constant movement.

–

The air was thick, and he found himself gasping for air as his eyes slowly opened to a dark, restrictive space. Attempting to suppress an overwhelming feeling of panic, he makes an effort to study these bizarre surroundings: his movement was limited but not fully restricted, his body was wrapped in something soft yet seemingly durable – a bag, perhaps? The sound of his own laboured breathing covered any noise from outside (assuming there was anything to drown out), and his body was beginning to ache from the hard floor he seemed to be laid out on. Slowly, Gareth closes his eyes, resolved to his own confusion while still holding out a certain hope that this was just a very lucid dream.

–

Rotting floorboards moaned in agony under the force of unsteady footsteps as he explored this peculiar structure. Paint was peeling from the walls around broken windows, the door looked ready to fall off its hinges at any moment, and there was a hole in one of the interior walls offering a view into the adjacent room of the house.

Slowly, Gareth made his way over, cautiously surveying this extra space. There was a black figure which, on closer inspection, bore an eerie resemblance to a human body wrapped in some covering, and he figured it was best not to get too close as he began to feel an ominous presence lingering in the empty space behind him.

–

A dull hum filtered through radio static as he held his breath, listening to the echoes of creaky footsteps. Every thought was conflicted, an instinct to call for help battled by the overwhelming sense of dread which only supported the notion that he dare not speak for fear of who (or what) could be outside. Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, the echoes seemed to grow farther away and he gasped for oxygen.

–

Shadows obscured the far corner of the room as Gareth slowly turned around, inexplicably drawn to the presence felt behind him. Turning away from the mysterious figure in the other room, he glides toward the darkness with silent curiosity.

Jolted distortions briefly conjoin into a coherent form, disproportionately slender in shape as it seemed to crawl from the shadows. He stood paralysed as the faceless black figure approached, convulsing as its movements emulated a fatal software glitch. Fingers like spider’s legs reached out, twisting and contorting.

“Welcome home.”

Gareth mouthed the words as he read the shadow’s movements.

Overwhelming despair manifested through unconstrained nausea boiling up in his stomach, a sharp increase in heart rate and cold sweats. He clamoured for the door, struggling to escape the very thought: ‘home.’ A splinter in the floorboards caught his toe, throwing the weight of his entire body into the door as it swung open in response.

Everything blurred at the sensation of being hurled through the door, and before he could process any of it, Gareth found himself hunched over on his hands and knees vomiting into an incoherent mess of green leaves and overgrown vines.

–

“Subject number $(@*, day 1: Apparent psychosis,” a faint, almost mechanical voice echoes from outside the dark, plastic confines.

The voice had a familiar sound, but why?

Gareth opens his mouth to respond, but no sound is produced, and the air is only made heavier by his continued breathing.

–

Head spinning, he slowly forces himself upright. The front door had somehow shut, flecks of red paint peeling off of the exterior, sharply contrasting with what was left of the white paint covering the rest of the structure. Wild plants grew like snakes up the sides of the house in a curious pattern much like the cracks in the pavement he had often found himself sleeping on.

Turning around, the foliage seemed to have conquered whatever was left of a yard, all but erasing any traces of human life. This was a place that, by all appearances, had long been forgotten.

He circled the house, taking care with each step not to stumble over the growth covering the ground. As he turned the corner, he spotted a thick, light brown rope hanging from a tree, tied into a hangman’s noose ominously hanging in the distance, a cheap plastic chair suspiciously placed underneath.

Momentarily taken by the gentle swinging motion, Gareth quickly shook his head in an attempt to force his mind to ignore the morbid image in front of him.

—

The sensation of being watched came over him as he continued to make his way through the growth surrounding the house, and the increasing unease quickly became enough to compel him back inside. Carefully, he pulled the front door open, slowly looking inside before taking the first step.

No sign of the creature from the shadows was seen, and the decaying walls surrounding him provided an acceptable amount of relief from that feeling of being watched.

–

The old wooden structure whined and groaned, each movement of the door, every footstep taken was heard from inside this stuffy, dark prison. Unable to see the surroundings causing such unsettling sounds, Gareth squirms, trying to free himself from what seemed to be some sort of reinforced bag, albeit unsuccessfully.

–

Static began playing from another part of the house, with distorted sounds cutting in and out. Perplexed, he tiptoed his way across the room and down a hallway in the direction of the sound.

The hallway had led him into what appeared to have been a storage closet at some point, now empty save for the decaying shelves lining the wall. A small radio sat on one of the shelves; it appeared rather basic, a black rectangular shape with a silver antenna and dials which set AM/FM frequencies. Gareth found himself thinking it reminded him of the portable radio his foster father had kept on an end table; outdated even back then, but ‘why upgrade when this one still works?’

He leaned in closer, gently turning the knobs to see if he could better hear the odd sounds cutting in and out between the static.

“Eins. Zwei. Drei.” A muffled female voice seems to be counting at an odd pace through the radio speaker. A high pitched vacuum sound then ensued as the dial was turned slightly higher, lowering as another frequency came into focus, still distorted by crackling sounds. Strange beeping sounds could be heard, the pattern appearing to resemble Morse code, though Gareth wasn’t familiar enough to be certain. After a third frequency was hit, broadcasting an incoherent male voice, he began to feel his nausea return, which prompted him to switch the radio unit off.

With unease still lingering over him, he left the storage closet, hesitantly setting out to explore the rest of this dismal structure.

–

The crinkling sound of the black plastic caused by his attempt to break free left his heart racing, and he resolved to lie still once more with deep breaths.

An ominous sound seemed to be coming from outside; it was certainly cryptic, and sounded almost broken, though he was too far away to hear anything in detail.

–

Shapes seemed to move out of the corner of his eye, disappearing before he could turn his head enough to get a decent look at whatever it was he thought he saw. As he let out a deep exhale, he turned the corner into another room where he was presented with a backward-facing staircase, almost as if it were constructed to deter anyone from using it. From an architectural standpoint, the sight was entirely nonsensical and absurd.

Holding his breath, Gareth moved his thin frame through the small space between the wall and the bottom stairs, carefully checking the integrity of each step before climbing upward. There was nothing but a large, empty room at the top of the stairs, with soft moonlight flooding through a small window, projecting the silhouette of the noose outside onto the opposite wall. Still standing at the top of the staircase, he once again found himself entranced by this morbid image, his gaze fixated on the silhouette decorating the wall.

As the rope gently swayed back and forth, another figure started to bleed out from the shadow, this one less distorted and more human-like. A woman without a face seemed to slide out of the tree, emerging with a hangman’s noose around her neck, almost as if she had cut herself down and kept the rope as an accessory.

“Finally, you’ve found me, my dear friend…” Her ethereal voice was unsettling in its familiarity. Was she really a friend? Gareth didn’t exactly feel comfortable with the thought that he would fail to recognise his own friend, but why else would her voice sound so familiar?

—

Blunt force struck his body, crinkling the black plastic surrounding him but somehow causing no physical damage as far as he could tell.

“Just gotta soften it a bit,” he heard a voice from outside – was that his voice?

“Good, it’s easier to transport that way,” a female voice responded; this one sounded distant, hollow yet familiar.

He felt the weight of his body as it was propped from the ground; some kind of cable or rope tightening itself around his torso and legs as the blood began to rush to his head.

–

Finally, a real friend. After years of alternating being abused and invisible, this was a surreal yet welcome concept.

‘I have a friend.’

It didn’t even occur to him to question the ease with which he accepted her claim, nor the strange timing and circumstances under which she appeared to him.

The thought repeated itself with increasing confidence, and with that lift in spirits, he made his way down the backward staircase, returning to the centre of the abandoned house. His friend was already waiting, a circle of candles set up at her feet. How was it possible for her to be waiting here without having passed him..? Where did these candles come from? What did it mean?

Gareth opens his mouth to ask, and the faceless female figure glides forward, gently silencing him before handing over a small match book.

It was going to be dark soon, he supposed, and striking each match, he lit all of the candles in the room without question.

–

“Subject number $(@* shows responsiveness to initial contact, but maintains some hesitation.”

The robotic voice didn’t seem to have any discernable source direction from inside the stuffy, black plastic which still surrounded his body as the gentle sensation of swaying back and forth lulled him into a state of acceptance.

‘What the hell are we doing here?’ – this time, the words came from his own voice, Gareth was sure of that much, but the thoughts hadn’t originated in his head, nor the words from his mouth.

–

The flickering light from the candles reflected off of the black plastic bag now hanging from the ceiling, its contents still in tact. He seemed almost mesmerised as he watched the black figure gently swing back and forth in a fashion reminiscent of a pendulum. Somehow, his initial instincts to avoid the mysteriously placed body-shaped bag had subsided, it’s presence no longer perceived as threatening, but rather just a natural part of the house.

His house.

At least, by the account of the monster which occupied the shadows.

The burning candles provided a minimal amount of warmth as darkness slowly began to creep in from outside, enhancing the shadows projected along the walls. The shapes appeared to twist in some sort of dance, contracting and stretching along with the flicker of the small flames. There was a faint sensation of being watched, and it wasn’t coming from the body still hanging from the ceiling.

Suspicious glances combined with a general sense of unease hovered over the shadows on the walls; they appeared uninhabited, but then again, perhaps it was meant to appear that way.

By this point, it was becoming apparent that Gareth’s thought processes had changed; things that should have seemed impossible or at the very least demanded a considerable amount of explanation now went unquestioned, sometimes even unnoticed.

The shadow of the noose hanging from the tree outside seemed to manifest again, drawing attention to itself and away from the body that still hung from the ceiling. The faceless woman had, at some point after handing him the book of matches, seemed to have disappeared.

—

An unsettling feeling fell over the atmosphere as the world fell completely dark, completely silent. Despite the inclination to believe that the shelter of an abandoned house would provide more comfort than sleeping out on the streets, Gareth had never felt so unsettled.

At least the streets had the hum of street lamps, the sounds of traffic, little reminders of life, but this; were it not from the flicker of the candles, there would be nothing. A place abandoned by life.

A small gust of wind rustled some of the dead branches outside and the sound was so sinister that it caused his heart to race ungodly fast, each thump hitting his eardrums louder than the last.

The body bag still hung from the ceiling, a small croak as it swayed ever so slightly in perfect sync with the noise outside. Gareth brought his knees up to his chest, hands gripped on to the tattered denim of his jeans as if life itself depended on it. He tried closing his eyes, thinking of a better time, better place, but ultimately couldn’t decide whether it was more terrifying to have them open or shut as he sat curled up in the middle of the floor.

–

An air of unease fell over him as he hung, helpless, still no closer to piecing together how he ended up here.

–

Gareth grew increasingly wary of the walls around him, the quietest of sounds sent jolts of panic through his trembling body. There was something out there, something in the walls; he wasn’t alone, or perhaps he was so utterly alone that his mind lacked the ability to process it. Either way, he was certain of an unfriendly presence, and as the candles burned, he prayed for the sun to come up before their flames died out.

Time stretched into eternity as the towers of wax grew shorter.

–

He began to hear voices, most of the words were too muffled to make out but “44, 44, 45, good,” seemed to be a recurring phrase.

The voices were muffled, as if someone was communicating by radio. Still trembling, Gareth slowly rose to his feet. He daren’t speak as he quietly tiptoed to the windows, unable to see anything outside. The feeling of unease grew heavier as he continued to hear the intermittent voices. They seemed to be repeating the same pattern of sound despite not being able to understand the individual words. His heart began to physically ache as it sped, and he could hear the blood as it rushed through his ear canals, creating a sound that resembled a swirl, or perhaps waves in a body of water. He hadn’t heard anything quite like the sound of blood rushing through his ears like this before.

In a brief moment of insight, he then recalled the mysterious radio in the closet broadcasting cryptic messages, and he carefully grabbed one of the candles, using it to light the way down the hall.

The radio was off, no sound was coming from it. He turned it over and noticed that there were no batteries installed, and yet it hadn’t been plugged into anything… The feeling of dread worsened and his breaths became more shallow and frantic. He left the radio on the shelf, barely able to walk enough to make his way back to the main room, where he set the candle back down by the rest.

They were almost completely melted down.

–

Faint sounds could be heard, as if someone were creepy through the space, but he was just left hanging, blood still pooling in his head as restraints felt tight against his body, which was shielded from them by only a thin layer of black plastic.

“Subject number $(@: appears agitated by the dark,” said a muffled, mechanical voice.

What kind of twisted scenario had he been thrown into, and why?

(This one’s still technically a WIP)

She could feel the bruise forming under her eye, broken blood vessels pulsing as she stared in the mirror at the slightly swollen bulge.

How much was too much?

He promised this would end, promised he would get better, treat her like a proper human being, provide for them and create a family like everyone else.

Was this even what she wanted, or was she just too weak to say no to a man begging on his knees, appearing completely vulnerable even after he just beat the shit out of her?

Lily couldn’t answer the question; all she knew was that her sense of pity had so far ruled over the advice of the two or three friends that she had when she watched this pathetic display of fake vulnerability from him… Until it didn’t.

With a gentle touch, she rubs her eye, blood still pulsing – her bank account couldn’t afford the amount of makeup it would take to cover this up much longer. It wasn’t worth it; it never was, but it had taken her months to see it. It’s just not worth the effort to hide what she endures night after night as if it’s normal for some guy to punch you in the face for no reason other than to exert his dominance.

Whatever this was, it wasn’t love, it wasn’t even healthy.

With a deep breath, she snuck into the room to pack her small backpack with the essentials, taking extra care not to wake him up; if he found her leaving, well, she didn’t even want to imagine the cost.

An alarmingly loud snore causes her to jump as he shifts position in his sleep; her heart races, adrenaline levels on maximum as she packs up with as much speed as she can possibly muster. It’s only a matter of time before her chance is ruined.

Backpack in hand, Lily sneaks out the front door and onto the street, barefoot, wearing nothing but a plain white summer dress as her dirty blonde hair flies around her face in loose waves, as if it wants to curl but can’t quite find the secret behind that 1950’s Marilyn Monroe look. She’s anything but; disheveled, thin, wasting away with her scars and her bruises. To most, nothing more than a lost cause, not mentally stable enough to be taken seriously, just a pretty face wasted from the after effects of trauma.

She stumbles down the street, willfully ignoring the pain of each step as her bare feet make contact with the unforgiving concrete sidewalks. Dim streetlights illuminate her path just enough for her to see where she’s going, though still leaving ample opportunity for a predator to jump out at any moment. Maybe she wanted that to happen; at least if some serial killer took her, she wouldn’t have to live through any of this anymore.

But it didn’t, and she eventually found herself at a bus stop, sitting on a bench with her bag as she began to nod off, waiting for morning when the schedule would resume, waking instead to another presence taking the empty space on the bench next to her.

Vast miles of scenery flew by my face as the car drove on, desert wasteland and sagebrush blurring in my peripheral vision as I flee, not sure if I’m heading toward something or running away, but not really caring either way.

We can’t undo our pasts, and I often question how much we really have to say about our futures – all I know is that we have right now, this very moment, living and breathing the air as a product of our environments, from the radioactivity of Chernobyl to the smog and pollution of London, to the dry heat of California that I only pray isn’t enough to completely stall my car’s engine.

Although maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to me, I think to myself as the car keeps moving through my tear-stained eyes. 

I want to think I’m heading toward a new beginning, but for all I know that could still be the beginning of the end, but maybe it’s the end of a beginning as well; time never did make much sense to me.

Or maybe it makes too much sense, because I don’t feel trapped by it like most people; I don’t feel like it’s this unstoppable force going in only one direction that dooms me to be anything… All time is everywhere, and we’re just too small to see it; we’re stuck in a manifold where we can’t see that time isn’t any different from the other three familiar dimensions, but it is, and so we don’t have to be trapped by it.

Of course I talk like I understand this space-time thing so much better than I really do; I’m not sure I understand anything, I just know that I felt better when my friend explained the physics of it to me.

I felt better because I didn’t have to be trapped in time, and if I wasn’t trapped in time, that meant I definitely don’t have to be trapped in that place, with that person or in that hospital he loved sending me to.

That’s why I ran, I guess, that’s what led me here on the long drive to California.

Blue and red swirls of light reflected off of the cold, damp asphalt of the road leading up to an abandoned factory. The air was thick with tension, indistinct shouting, police in full tactical gear hidden behind their cars with scopes pointed at a lone SUV parked a few meters away from the old factory entrance. The concrete building was caving in; an aesthetic metaphor for the decay of industrial society, the inevitable fall of mechanization and its reliance on unsustainable pollution to power it.

Caleb coughed as a light breeze threw a whiff of ancient smoke across his face, shielding his mouth with the sleeve of his navy blazer. Nobody back at the station had bothered to brief him on the situation when they took advantage of a conveniently stationed FBI profiler, so he cluelessly steps through the haze of night into the flashing lights of chaos. 

—

There was no situation to diffuse, only wasted time surrounding an empty SUV outside of an abandoned factory. For reasons still unclear, last night’s events were a set-up intended to distract the police; keep public eyes in the wrong place. ‘But why?’ Caleb kept asking himself. No crimes had been reported; nothing unusual at all, in fact, so what was this mystery culprit’s motivation for sending the police toward an empty SUV at the edge of town? To go through the trouble of executing such a plan, putting each piece in its place in order for a fake threat to seem so undeniably imminent… One must be truly mad to craft such a plan just for laughs.

Yet, it remained the most obvious explanation. Perhaps this convenient call to a fake crime scene was more relevant than it seemed; after all, Agent Hendricks hunted madmen. He understood them, got into their heads by reaching depths darker than anyone else in the bureau dared to touch – perhaps the encounter was not coincidence, but in fact a challenge.

The design of the machine was supposed to be one of minimal risk; giant tanks with regulators to control the reactivity of each experimental compound pumped through the system and into a main chamber where the exposure, ignited by just the right dosage of power charging the chemical compounds, would spark renewed life into previously decaying cells.

Each new element introduced had to be studied with care, provided proper safeguards against their own unique properties. An experimental compoud which proved to be self-decaying had to be immediately quarantined in a separate chamber, containing the seemingly unpredictable emissions coming from such unstable particles, and yet an element that was far too stable lacked the necessary properties to emit the energy required to re-animate the organs of the subject. The compound had to be stable enough to safely be handled and yet still have the potential for instability brought on by the introduction of an external energy surge; crude imitations had been discovered and yielded positive, yet sub-optimal results, falling within the margin of error or (in)stability, and yet the optimal level was still a mystery to the young doctor.

To make matters worse, he had yet to obtain access to any reliable, self-contained method of generating the surge of electricity requried to set off the chain reaction intended to produce the end result: life. Every experiment, carefully planned and set up, had to be kept safely on hold until a suitably intense lightning storm rolled through, allowing the doctor to harness the magnificent bolt of electricity piercing through the skies. There was a maddening beauty to the sparks, the electric glow of the wires as they transferred electric charge from a contraption raised over the roof down into the intricately connected machinery that all hooked up to this centre tank; this magnificent sight almost offset the horrible inconvenience of being left to the whims of nature to properly conduct his experiments.

Almost.

Patience, after all, was not the first trait that came to mind when one thought of Victor Frankenstein. Obsession, perhaps; passion, even awkward eccentricities, but very seldom humility and never patience.

Neverhtheless, it was a forced virtue.

Having every anticipated safeguard strictly in place, every switch properly connected, every chamber, every wire, every connection sturdy and insulated, finally the doctor was ready to begin the next phase of his work; a new chapter in the saga of his work – the creation of life. 

All he needed now was a temporary assistant, minimally qualified, as the only work required of them would be flipping the correct switch at the correct moment (in other words, reacting quickly to being told ‘That one! Now!’ as the doctor would be caught up with monitoring energy input levels and overseeing that the procedure ran smoothly on the unlikely chance that he had to activate one of the overriding mechanisms and shut the whole thing down. To the layperson, this may seem an unnecessarily paranoid precaution, but to the scientist, mere awareness of the potential destruction that could happen as a result of even two seconds of negligence was the equivalent of a waking nightmare.)