FicWad

Maureen is walking down a long dark hallway with the sound of her steps being echoed and distorted as she moves across the black and white linoleum floor. The walls of the hallway, colored white on the upper half and blue on the lower half, have doors uniformly spaced on each side and on the top of each, they are numbered in black with evens on her left and odds on her right. As she walks further, the faint florescent lights hanging above her create to flicker, creating a strobe like effect. At the other end of the hall, she sees the white costumed figure from the night before slowly marching away from her. She frantically runs towards her doppelganger as the strobe become more and more intense until the point where the hall is flashing from total light and darkness. As she runs, she feels the floor becoming wet and can hear the splashing of the puddles beneath her. Barreling down this seemingly endless hallway, she begins to smell an awful stench that floods her nostrils, the smell of rotting decaying flesh. She sprints harder and faster to out run the appalling odor, but it only gets more rancid as it feels as if it is flowing past her nose and into her body, infecting her mind, throwing it into a state of utter confusion. She can't remember how she got here or why she started running, only knowing that she has to continue onward, pushing herself harder, praying for an end to the accursed stench and hallway. She wishes for just one second that this demented smell would cease for an instant so that she could just have one moment of clarity, but the odor becomes more putrid and overwhelming with every step. With the smell driving her to the point of madness, she sees a bright white light at the end of the hall. Feeling that redemption is in her grasp and a sadistic glint in her eye, she charges towards it with all of her might. As she gets within feet of it, she frantically dives into the light only to have the door slam violently in her face, entombing her in darkness.
Maureen sits up to see a lone shadowed figure sitting in a chair a couple of feet in front of her. The area around them is completely dark with the only light being a small blue one emanating from the figure's lap making only his or her chin fully visible. The light seems to have the figures undivided attention.
" What do you want from me?" Maureen shrieks.
The figure quickly stares back at her but does not say a word.
"Why do you want from me? Answer me damn it!" she screams with tears flowing out of her eyes.
Soon after, her screams are answered by a swift opening of a door to her left and her mother darts into the room with another woman dressed in a lab coat and stethoscope around her neck, looking several years younger that her mother.
"Maureen, thank God, you're awake. We were getting worried," Her mother says, sounding angst ridden, as she flickers on the light switch, revealing Maureen to be in a hospital gown and sitting on a bed and before her a mortified six year Janey Smitherson with short brown hair, holding a back-light portable game system on her lap. Dr. Anne Smitherson swiftly enters, approaching to her frightened child and whispers something in her ear, which reassures her and prompts her to leave. She looks to be in her late twenties with long light brown hair and a body that is noticeably curvy despite the masking of her white lab coat.
"What happened to you? I came to pick you up and you weren't at the dojo. I drove around to find you passed out in an alley. You scared me half to death!" her mother says still filled with angst as she tightly hugs her. She looks at the terrified face of her daughter to see that she is still fixated on the wall in front of her. She can feel her body, quivering in fear as tears roll out of her red eyes and down her pale face, and hears the faint moaning coming out of her mouth. She slowly steps back and urgently turns to the doctor.
"What's wrong with my baby?" she cries.
"She's probably in shock from whatever ordeal she went through," she replies, sounding unsure.
As soon as she finishes her sentence, Maureen yells in pain and forcefully cringes forward and grabs her stomach. Her mother tries to go to her, but Anne holds her back as her daughter begins to feverishly shake as if she is being violently beaten.
"She may be having some kind of seizure", she warns
Maureen's mother tries to fight her grip, when Anne warns, " If you try holding her down, and it could seriously injure her."
"Listen you, I won't let the likes of you get between me and my daughter!" Helen lashes back.

Suddenly, Maureen lets out a shrilling scream and an unknown invisible force violently slams the two against the wall behind them, instantly knocking them unconscious. She continues to scream until a similar force thrusts her head back, causing her silenced body to fall backward onto the mattress as the lights flicker off.

Still lying in an alley, Greg awakens and feels sore all over as he clumsily and slowly rises to his feet. He cautiously looks around himself and sees that his assailants had taken off and, then, checks his person to see that, surprisingly, they didn't take anything, not even the cash he had swiped from the wallet. Using the side of the building to his right as a source of balance, he starts to awkwardly walk forward until he hears the sound of another foot coinciding with his own, echoing and bouncing off of the black stained walls and cobble stoned ground beneath him. As the fear shoot through his body, he desperately begins to shove off of the wall as his stumbling bruised feet try and keep up with the momentum that it produces, his lungs feeling like they were being squeezed in a vice, his heart pounding on his chest like a sledge hammer and his ears hearing his looming pursuer inch closer and closer. In the distance in front of him, he can hear a faint feminine voice, so faint he can barely register it and yet it sounds very familiar. The voice seems to be in a similar predicament to he and he can hear the unholy terror in her voice. He screams out from beneath his panting and wheezing in the hopes of rescue, but the owner's voice can't hear him. He desperately charges forward in the hopes of making contact as his legs slip and slide beneath his body, trying to hold balance. He pushes himself so hard that he barely notices that the ground is about to end with a large seemingly endless pit in front of him. Using all of his weight to try and not fall in, his legs finally slip from underneath him as his back falls backward and his right arm pushes off in the same direction. His fall is broken by an unknown set of hands that grab him and, before the boy can even motion to try and escape his captor's grasp, he is thrown into the abyss beneath him.

Outside the world of Greg's subconscious, an hour after the unknown force blacked out not only the hospital Maureen is staying at, but also wiped out the New Spaniel power grid and the city is still blanketed in black. A large crowd huddles around the entrance to the same back alley where Greg was assaulted. Some are crying, while others are simply talking amongst themselves. Some are going as far as to push and shove their way to the front of the crowd. Unfortunately, for all of them, the actual crime scene is in too deep in the alley for them to really make out what the officers are really doing or what they are examining and more importantly what crime was actually committed.
Inside the alley, three mangled and bloodied teenaged carcasses lie lifeless on the cold cobbled ground, one lying next to the wall to the left with the other two closer to the center. Armed with flashlights, forensic detectives survey the cramped space to find evidence on what cut these unfortunate souls' lives so prematurely. One of the victims is lying on his back, his leg bent backwards with such force that it entered his nasal cavity, making contact with the brain. The impact was so strong that it snapped his neck. The second victim's body, the one closest to the wall, has had his head knocked clean off and it looks as if someone or something knocked it into the wall with the face pushed inward. The rest of the body lies on the ground, spewing out blood from the neck. The third has had his chest cavity caved in and his left hand crushed.

Through the crowd, a skinny middle aged man with black hair carrying a small flashlight, dressed in a gray dress coat and pants with a light blue shirt and navy blue tie, shows his detective's badge to the officer by the entrance as he motions underneath the police tape. He slowly walks over to one of the forensic officer, shining his light on each of the mangled corpses, trying to gather as much information as he can.

As he approaches him, the forensic office says," Detective Joe Smitherson, I'm glad you could get here with the black out and all. Where's your partner? Did her beat you to the bar?"

The detective dryly replies as he continues surveying the scene, "Detective Drowsner got called away on some family business. So, what happened and who reported it?" and then places the flashlight in his mouth to allow it to shine down on the small note pad he pulls out of his pocket.

The officer answers, "Officer Maxwell Sprung did. He got called out here after some neighbors complained about some weird commotion an hour ago."

"Where is Officer Sprung right now?" Joe asks, removing the light from his mouth.

"He got called away to help keep the peace during the black out a couple minutes after we arrived," he answers.

Joe quickly jots down notes with the light shining on it then removes the light as he asks, "Anyone uncover or find any trace of a weapon." and replaces the light back in his mouth.

"So far, only a knife was found on one of the victims, but if we find anything else, it will be in the report", he replies.

"Any survivors" the detective asks, sounding lightly muffled with the flashlight in his mouth.
"Yeah, some pale looking Caucasian kid that got beaten pretty bad and I believe they took him in an ambulance to Thomas General right before traffic got bad about a forty five minutes ago," the officer replies.

"And what was found on him," Joe adds.

"Just a gold locket, a pack of cigarettes, a lighter and some cash," he answers.

Joe takes a few more notes and then takes flashlight out of his mouth one last time with the same hand that is carrying the notebook and says "Thank you" as he walks past the officer and on to the far side of the alley as the forensic office diverts his attention back to sifting through this bloody mess. Joe takes one hard last look at this massacre as slight snarl grows on his face. His fist tightens around the yellow pencil in his right hand, causing it to snap. He forcefully exhales, turns back around and continues to walk into the shadows.

Back at the hospital, a wheeled gurney bolts through two large plastic doors with small clear windows near the top of each. Strapped on top of the gurney and still unconscious, Greg lies motionless until he suddenly awakens and desperately tries to free himself from his restraints, but is unsuccessful. The orderlies continue to push him further and further down the blackened hall, completely ignoring his struggle, as a doctor begins to walk by his side. The lack of light and his delirious state makes the color of the clothing that the medical workers are wearing appear to be just as dark as the portal they are walking through as they walk at a very slow and solemn pace. The doctor appears to be doing hand gestures as he reads from a large clipboard and sounds he is reading some kind of scripture in a foreign language. Along the walls, there are doors with names on them and numbers and each of them have little dark tinted clear plastic bins with gifts and flowers in some for whoever lies in that room. The procession continues onward down the blackened hallway. The boy cries out in sheer terror, a cry that hauntingly echoes throughout the hospital, but does not halt the movement as he frantically tries fights, but proves to be futile. They finally reach an opened room and proceed to wheel him into the center of the room as the doctor chants out a few more words he can't understand and, with the orderlies, exit the room, closing the door with an ominous and echoing slam. Greg continues to struggle and yell, but the strength to do both quickly fade, leaving the boy alone with nothing but shadows and silence.

Several hours later, Maureen's guardians sit at her bedside in small blue cushioned chairs with wooden arms as she still lies in bed unconscious, John with his head resting on his left hand and elbow resting on the arm and his wife holding an ice pack on top of her blond head with her eyes looking a little glazed from being slammed against the wall earlier. She breaks the silence by saying, " I hate this place. It seems no matter how far I get in life; it always brings me back here."

"It's okay," John consoles as he extends his hand over her hand.

"It's never been okay!" She snaps back, "They told me it was going to be okay when they pulled the plug on my father, but my mother refused and I had to watch him slowly die.

They said the same damned thing sixteen years ago when they told me that there would be no problems with my delivering...." The urge to cry overwhelms as she tries to finish and the tears fall down as she leans into her husband's shoulder. Her husband opens his mouth to once again console her, but a nurse, who announces that visiting hours are over, interrupts him. The couple rises from their chairs and says good night to their sleeping daughter and exit hand in hand.

Several hours later, after all the visitors have left, Maureen finally awakens from her deep sleep with a gasp and rises to a sitting position. As she sits up, a strange sensation begins to develop inside of her. At first, she doesn't even notice it, but as she gets more and more fixated on its existence, so does its strength. Soon, it feels more than just a mere sensation and more like a presence as if someone or something was in the room. She looks to the bed next to her, but there is no occupant and then walks over to the bathroom, but it is empty. Still, the feeling won't desist. As she takes a step towards the door, it intensifies to the point where it feels as if someone had just touched her over the shoulder as her skin tightens and her heart begins to race. Whatever presence she senses, it waits for her beyond the confines of her room. She carefully creeps over to her door and slowly cracks it open. Outside, there is nothing unusual, just an empty hallway with a male nurse sitting behind a desk, who apparently has been working too many hours and has his face planted on the desk. She slips out of her room and, guided by her senses, heads towards her left. As she takes her first step, the lights flicker off again. Only this time, a set of very dim auxiliary lights illuminate, but many of them continue to flicker on and off. As she moves forward, her awareness of this other entity goes far beyond that of just knowing its existence as she begins to feel raw emotion growing emanating from it in the form of unbridled fear. Soon, it gets harder and harder to tell the difference between this fear and that of her own and the combination of the two is almost paralyzing to her. Despite this and as mindlessly and instinctually as a lemming marching towards a cliff, she keeps walking down this portal with only this new found sixth sense as her guide. She begins to breathe heavier and heavier with each step as the soft tapping of her bare feet hitting the carpet enters her ears as the presence leads her onward to the staircase at the end of the hall. She keeps marching until she hears a loud thunderous noise beneath her as she freezes in terror.

"And so he says to the woman, "Could you hold my sheep?"" says some middle aged doctor, which is followed by the sound of the sophomoric laughter of his companion as the two stomp down the stairs, followed by the opening and thunderous slamming of another door further down.

She lets out a sigh of relief as a slight smile grows on her face. Still, she feels the presence beaconing her, forcing her to cautiously and uneasily continue onward. Her hands begin to nervously shake as she steps closer and closer as her breathing goes from heavy to frantic and stuttering, echoing down the metal staircase, and feels the warm tears flow down her cheeks. Finally, she reaches the door to the roof and it looks like the lock had been ripped open by something very strong for it has been seriously bent. She reaches out to the metal bar shaped handle, which had been bent by whoever opened it, her body trying to keep her quivering hand steady. When she steps through the door, the sounds of the traffic below and the blue light of the moon and stars greet her. A few feet in front of her, is the epicenter of this overwhelming presence, a skinny pale looking boy with long dirt-blackened hair, two black eyes, a scare on his chin and a fat lower lip. He seems to be facing her, but almost looks like he is looking right through her.
The two just stand there, staring at each other with the writhing fear pulsating between them. This bizarre stalemate is broken when he begins to walk towards her. Petrified, she freezes as he walks right past her and dives off the roof. She sprints over to the edge and sees the falling body as it plummets. As the look of utter shock grows on her face, a sudden burst of blinding light originates from his body, completely hiding him. From out of the light, reveals him to be dressed in a suit that is almost identical the one in the dream she had the night before, except his costume is blood red and the emblem looks different, but he is too far away to be able to tell what exactly it is. Instead of falling, he is flying higher and higher and further and further away into the night's sky. Maureen, with little or no explanation for what just happened, begins to feel the fear in him subside and, in its place, is the feeling of uncontrollable rage, which is the last thing she senses as she loses her connection with him, as he disappears over the horizon.