Melt
It was me, my friend Ed (he is missing 2 limbs, his right arm and left leg, he has prosthetics tho), Shouyou, and Rin. We were alone, in the woods way after dark in the mid-fall. The trees were near barren with crunchy, dead leaves on the ground. It was quiet until IT started. The ticking. It was loud, overbearingly so. It rang through our skulls in such a way that it left us dazed. As time went on the ticking got louder and louder. Tick tock… tick tock… tick tock. Over and over again in a never-ending pattern. It was almost melodic in its insanity-inducing rhythm. We were confused and concerned. Where were we? Why were we there? What’s happening? It wasn’t long before we saw it. The monster. A massive being with 6 long, spindly legs and an almost gelatinous body with a grotesque head sitting on the top, bulbous eyes shiny with some thick fluid. Its mouth unevenly split, looking as if someone took a knife to its empty face and attempted to cut it a mouth. It always smiled, no matter what. Its creepy grin was never wiped from its horrific face. After almost 10 seconds of staring, it raced forward. Someone screamed. It might have been me. We all took off sprinting into the woods, trying to get away from the beast. Stumbling our way through the brush we were terrified. We weren’t running for long before it became quiet once more. Deathly quiet, not even the ticking was heard anymore. Every step we made was cripplingly loud, the cruuunch of the browned leaves echoed throughout the woods. For a while, we thought that we were safe, that the monster we had seen earlier wasn’t coming for us. This was all naive thinking of course. Once the pure, unadulterated fear ceased to exist, it attacked. The four of us were sorely outmaneuvered and outmatched. This monster was something else. We were all screwed. We would run, hide, get found, and run again until we were gasping, wheezing messes on the floor. We could tell it was playing with us like a cat would swat at a mouse after knowing there is no escape, giving the mouse hope that it had a chance before promptly squashing it in a split second. We didn’t stand a chance but we had no idea what would happen if we stopped, and we sure in hell didn’t want to find out. Not too long after our revelation, we could tell it got tired of this game.
“Ed? Rin? Sho?” I called, cautiously.
“Ed? Rin? Sho?” I hear from behind me, its tone almost mocking.
I slowly turn around to see the monster smiling creepily at me with its disgusting mouth and eery face. It looked like the cat that caught the canary. Its cheshire grin brought fear into my soul. I knew it was over as it loomed over me. There was no escape, fire on all sides of me, the screams of my friends long dissipated. It was just me and the monster. With the blue flames of the fire closing in, the monster released a banshee-like shriek and dropped a pile of red, soaking wet clothes. Under those clothes were limbs. Ed’s prosthetics, Shouyou’s arm with a crow tattoo on the wrist, Rin’s starburst scarred ankle that he hated so much. This was the confirmation I didn’t want. They were all dead, and I was next. The flames licked my skin, and all I felt was pain, it burned it burned it burned it burned IT BURNED IT BURNED. The skin on my arms was bubbling and the blood underneath was boiling. I could feel my arms melting. I couldn’t feel anything other than pain. The smell of burning flesh intruded my senses. My eyes were drying out and they burned too, ash was clouding my vision. The last thing I saw before I woke up was the monster’s stupid, grotesque face and cheshire grin.
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