Survival

by Chris Wright

  The Forest

  James pointed to the ground a few metres away, there was little to see other than some leaves disturbed.

  “That's where he was, he lifted up from the ground and then just broke into pieces” He said with tears welling in his eyes, “Then the thing seemed to suck him up or absorb him or something”

  Mike still didn't believe the story, it was too impossible to be true, James was suffering some kind of traumatic stress from what happened here. Mike was determined to find whatever creature was out here, he knew it must have carried Jarrah off somewhere. There was no blood anywhere to give him a clue as to where he might have been dragged. He took a close look at the ground for any prints, but drew a blank.

  “So, it came from up the track?” He asked to which James nodded, “Okay, well I'm going to have a look up there, Jarrah must be around here somewhere”

  “I told you, he was eaten or whatever the fuck it was, by that thing”

  “Yeah you said that already” Mike replied dismissively as he started creeping towards the foot of the mountain. James followed him nervously, making sure he was far enough behind Mike to be able to make a quick getaway. He didn't want to see that creature again, and if he did, he wasn't going to hang around.

  They took steady precise steps up the track, their heads searching from side to side for any sign of movement, their ears ready to hear a pin drop. All of a sudden there was that strange sound again in the distance, a mix of what Mike could only describe as an analogue roar, something in between organic and synthetic.

  “What the fuck?” Mike exclaimed, he had never heard a sound quite like it before.

  “That's it, shit, shit.... we're turning back and we're getting out of here, come on” shouted James fearfully.

  “Wait will you, I need to find out what it is”

  Then there was a ground-thumping movement that caught them both off guard and the trees and leaves in front of them suddenly took on a swirling pattern. It began to arrange itself into a pulsing mass of green and blue, faceless but recognisable enough to make it out as some kind of figure. James turned and ran and shouted Mike to do the same. Mike was transfixed by this entity, thoughts racing through his mind, barely any of them sitting in a synapse long enough to cause him to move. What the hell was this thing? It then began moving towards him, which snapped Mike out of his terrified trance and he held up his shot gun towards it.

  “Stay back for fucks sake” He shouted, like this thing could understand English.

  He quickly pulled the trigger with the gun pointed in the creature's direction. The bullets seemed to split apart and disappear into a black void that had emerged to swallow them up, a void which then instantly disappeared.

  “What the...?” He screamed.

  James was now fifty metres away, his legs moving wildly, trying to get him as far away as they could, all the while shouting Mike to follow. Mike tried to fire more bullets, but his hand locked up and started to tingle. The creature began to dissipate into a blue pulsing fog and began to envelope Mike. The Shotgun appeared to melt as if being rubbed away from reality with an eraser. He looked up at the entity that was now mere feet away from him and panic now took over. With all his might he tried pulling away from it, but his body was being drawn towards it, his legs starting to pulse as if in communication with the misty forest creature that was getting ever closer. He felt a sudden tear and let out a scream as the entity engulfed him and he gasped in astonishment at a deep never-ending void of blue pulsing veins, rippling all around him and pulling him apart. With one last exhalation of air, Mike found he could fight it no more and his mind seemed to explode into countless fragments of pulsing blue ripples.

  James had heard the final desperate screams from Mike and had watched in complete horror as his friend was shrouded by the blue veined forest creature and then sucked into some kind of vacuum, his last breath seemingly echoing out from the void hopelessly. The only option James had was to run, to run and not look back. Luckily, he still had his car keys in his pocket so didn't have to waste any time searching through his backpack. He left the campsite and all their belongings behind as he sprinted ferociously along the track they had come in on, to get to his car. His adrenalin was the only thing stopping him from collapsing, the urge to keep going and to survive was all that mattered at this moment. Everything in his whole life, every second meant nothing without him obeying what his adrenalin was telling him to do. He raced through the forest convinced he could hear the entity gathering pace, thumping behind him, almost taunting him. Every time he glanced round, he couldn't tell if he could see it or not, the creature seemed to be made of the forest so looking back quickly for a few seconds made it impossible to make anything distinctive out.

  He finally reached a clearing and saw his car parked a short distance away. He ran towards it, panting so hard he thought he was going to have a heart attack, unlocked the driver's door and jumped in. He looked back at the track he ran down, he could see something in the distance, something pulsing, getting closer, followed by that same ethereal half-mechanical growl that sent shivers all the way through him, not just down his spine. He turned the key, started the engine and took off as quick as he could back towards the city. He took long deep breaths as he checked his rear-view mirror to see if it was following him. He couldn't see anything and breathed a huge sigh of relief. He still had no idea what was happening, and kept praying that he would wake up, but he never did. He put his foot on the pedal to go faster, the only way he would feel safe would be to get as far away from here as he could. He had another quick glance in his rear-view mirror and his heart tried to jump free from his body. There in the back seat of his car was something pulsing, something blue, something swirling. As he took another deep nervous breath, he saw the blue ripples look back at him with what looked like two eyes, but they were actually more like cracks in reality, to the void that this creature came from. Just as quickly as he had glanced in his rear-view mirror he glanced back at the road and there in front of him was some kind of swirling mass eating up the road ahead of him.

  He had little time to think, he was heading towards a swirling vortex and he had eyes from an endless void staring at him from behind. He instinctively swerved away from the path of the vortex, seemingly the only option, and the car left the road, toppling down the embankment. It reached the bottom and collided with two trees, the branches crashing through the windscreen hitting James straight on. He took a few final breathes, blood dripping down from his chest where one of the branches had struck him. As he closed his eyes, he saw the blue pulses emerging from the 'eyes to the void' in his rear-view mirror, and then they slowly engulfed him. The car was sat at the bottom of the embankment, on its side, as the vortex from the road quickly and mercilessly swallowed the car, and with what appeared to be a blink, the car vanished. The road glitched from side to side and then switched back to how it was before, the area swallowed by the vortex completely back to normal. The embankment was clear of any obstruction as if nothing had ever happened. Back at the campsite the ground shook and pulsed blue before the tents and their belongings flickered like a flame and then dissolved away leaving the forest floor undisturbed.

  Chapter Three – Shadows Arise

  Saturday

  The alarm clock thundered to life, frightening Danny almost to death and making him leap up from his mattress as if he was being pulled up by a puppeteer's strings. He reached for it quickly as its incessant horn sound made his head seem to vibrate. With a huge sigh of relief, he managed to find the off switch. This was the first time he had set his alarm for years, but it seemed to be necessary as he couldn't trust his body to naturally rouse him anymore. He was still reeling about everything, he hadn't slept well at all. His addled brain went around and around in circles in the dead of night, trying to convince him that everything was okay. Except it wasn't, he was having false memories, memories that were realer than real. He went to the bathroom and did his usual routine, wash his face,
use the toilet and brush his teeth and came back into the bedroom to get dressed. That was odd. He looked at the clock and it was a clear ten minutes later than it should have been. He'd only been in the bathroom five minutes, yet his alarm clock was telling him fifteen minutes had passed. He approached his wardrobe, deeply troubled by this. It was yet another thing that was happening, what was he doing in these missing moments? Going into a trance? He didn't understand.

  He got dressed and went downstairs to get his breakfast and put on a pot of coffee. He scrolled through his messages on his phone while he spooned the cereal into his mouth. There was one from Monique that had been sent about an hour earlier and she wanted him to phone her. Her message sounded quite urgent, which seemed strange as Danny wasn't her go-to person when things were getting tough and she needed someone to talk to, it was usually Mike. He finished off his cereal and sipped his coffee, staring out the window at the blue sky overhead. He should call her if it's urgent he figured and so promptly dialled her number. She answered within one ring, as if she had been sat there waiting for Danny to call.

  “Hi Danny, I'm so pleased you called” she said.

  “What's up?” Danny asked.

  “I'm not sure, can you meet me somewhere? I could do with talking to someone” She said with what sounded like slight angst.

  “Yeah no problem, can you give me an hour I've just woken up” he replied to which she obliged, “Where do you want to meet?”

  “What about at the Sycamore Stop?” She said.

  The Sycamore Stop was a bar on the Eastern side of the city, it was a twenty-four-hour place, kitted out in light wood panelling. It wasn't the most upmarket place, but was better than a lot of the bars close by.

  “Isn't it a bit early in the day to go to a bar?” he asked.

  “Not the way I'm feeling, no” She replied, to which he agreed to meet her there.

  He finished his coffee and started getting ready to see her. It was a short bus ride from his house to the East side and then a five-minute walk to the bar. He didn't have a car as he had no real need for one, everywhere he went and everything he did was either walkable or easy to get to by public transport. It was a very nice city to live in, more green spaces than concrete, so wherever you walked it was pleasant with ornate flower displays and towering blossoming trees. There were enough little parks dotted around that you could dip into one when the traffic and hustle and bustle got too much. It was often just enough to recharge your batteries before you carried back on with your journey.

  Danny went through the motions and arrived at the Sycamore Stop roughly an hour later as promised, although he noticed once again that five minutes seemed to have slipped away. He saw Monique sitting at a table, sipping what looked like a whiskey. A whiskey at 10am? Something must be wrong. He grabbed a soft drink from the bar and hurried over to her, whereby they had a quick hug and peck on the cheek to greet each other.

  “So, Whiskey eh?” He said pointing to her half-finished measure.

  “Yeah, and it's not going to be my last” she said with a wry smile, “Sorry if you had other plans this morning, but I just had to talk to someone”

  “That's fine, I had nothing planned except maybe catch up with Brandon later on. Before you say what you say, can I just apologise for my behaviour Thursday night? I can't help feeling that I must have looked completely insane. I'm not sure what is happening with me. I've gone to see a psychiatrist and I think it's going to be okay, so, yeah, sorry and all that, I didn't mean to try and poop on Sam's parade”

  She smiled at him with a slightly confused look.

  “I'm not sure what you're talking about Danny” She replied.

  “The Olivia thing” He said quickly, “It's all so real in my head, but it can't be. So, we'll just put that behind us if that's okay?”

  Monique nodded, and she wasn't actually sure what Danny was referring to, but it sounded like whatever it was, was being dealt with.

  “Okay, this is going to sound strange” She said resting her hand on Danny's arm, “and I'm not sure how to even start or quite what to say”

  Danny touched her hand that was on his arm and smiled.

  “I think I understand more than most at the moment about not knowing what to say, just say it, I'll listen. Nothing can sound weirder than what's being going through my head the last two days” He said.

  So, she started trying to explain what she had been going through. It had started on the Friday, she woke up and was okay, but then throughout the day she kept getting flashes of images in her mind. They were brief at first but quickly gained in both intensity and duration, and they were accompanied by a high-pitched screech. Sometimes they were so strong she couldn't do anything other than drop to the floor in pain.

  “What were these flashes?” asked Danny.

  “Visions, of us, of this world and other things. It's hard to remember them all, there were that many” She replied, “I could see this world falling apart and dying. I had visions of great explosions in the sky and total devastation and it felt so real. It was happening to all of us, no one was safe”

  This was quite a disturbing set of events that Danny was hearing and it seemed a crazy coincidence that he was experiencing things at the same time as Monique was having her own traumas occurring. There had to be some link between them, were they being drugged by someone?

  “This is crazy Monique. First, I have these insane false but super real memories, and now you're having strange visions too. This can't be a coincidence” He said frenziedly trying to piece it all together.

  “I haven't told you the rest of it yet” She said as she gulped down the last of her whiskey before hailing the barman for another.

  The barman brought another double measure over and she took a few deep breaths, trying to compose herself.

  “I've seen creatures” She said nervously.

  “Creatures?” Danny asked. This made him feel a lot saner than he had felt all morning.

  Emma

  Emma spent an hour and a half jogging on Saturday mornings, part of her fitness routine. She hit the gym four times in the week after work and Saturday morning was a little extra push. She enjoyed it more than the gym work, as she was out on the trails that weaved their way through the city and out around the outskirts. It was a nice steady route from her home and enabled her to take in the scenery around the edge of suburbia, of towering hills and forests of green, a paradise close to home. Her boyfriend Alistair used to join in, but his knees had seen better days, so he had decided to call it a day. He used this hour and a half on a Saturday to sit and quietly read the newspaper. Emma only really ran for an hour; the other half an hour was where she often stopped at a friend’s house to see how they are. It meant she could take different routes each week and drop by someone different, a nice little change in her routine to keep it interesting. Today she decided to drop in on Samir. He wasn't expecting her, but as it was eleven in the morning, it meant he'd be out of bed by now, so she wouldn't be disturbing him. She knocked at his door and after a few moments Samir opened the door forcefully, looking agitated.

  “Hey Sam” Emma said smiling, a little out of breath still.

  “Emma, hi” Samir said motioning her into his house.

  He closed the door behind her quickly and they both wandered into his lounge. Samir lived alone and was normally quite tidy, but for some reason he had items strewn across the lounge, as if they were just dropped and forgotten about.

  “Looks like you need a spring clean in here” Emma said, “Have you been too busy to clear up?”

  Samir looked around them, still looking distracted and sat down at his desk, where his overworked laptop was sat.

  “Yeah don't worry about that” Samir said, “I'm a little busy this minute, if you want to grab a drink of water or anything then you know where everything is”.

  Samir was normally much more accommodating than this, which Emma found a little odd. Why was he still working on a Saturday? That was also un
usual for him. She wandered into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. As she walked back to the lounge, she could smell cigarette smoke. Samir never smoked inside the house, so this was another strange bit of behaviour she wasn't expecting.

  “You smoke inside now?”

  “Yeah” he said engrossed in whatever he was typing on the laptop, in between swigs of what she thought looked like a large glass of vodka.

  “And you're drinking that at eleven am too? What's going on? What's wrong?” She asked concerned.

  None of this behaviour was normal for him, so something serious must be wrong. Why he was furiously typing away on his laptop? Emma walked towards him and glanced over his shoulder to notice that he was in some kind of chat room.

  “What are you doing?” she asked curiously. This was all a little unusual and she was desperate to know what was going on.

  Samir ignored her and carried on typing. She tried to look at what he was writing, it seemed to be something about shadow figures. What were shadow figures? And who was he talking to? Samir hit the enter key on his laptop and his reply darted back to whoever was on the other end. He waited anxiously for a reply, sipping once more from his glass that was very quickly losing liquid. Something popped up on the screen and Samir swore loudly and banged his hand on the keyboard.