FicWad

gjnhjfdhns: Part TWENTY-TWO: Decisions, Decisions

From where the leg disappeared spilled blood, out of nowhere, the thick plasma sickly dripping onto the floor. Then I could see the tattered remnants of skin crawl around the end of the leg. From there sprouted the rest of a body of a man, with milky white eyes and hair, and a pale, bloated stomach, in which the leg was embedded in.

I managed to yank the leg out of him, but I couldn't seem to move my feet.

Run.

I stared at those lifeless eyes, so pale that the pupils seemed to have disappeared within the whites, and noticed that those eyes seemed so very ashen compared to the bright crimson spilling out of his stomach, and dripping down the leg onto my hand.

Run!

He started to slump toward me, falling forward.

I ran.

I passed the leg to Mitchell- Unbloodied, wheel-end first- and hoisted myself onto the two-table high platform. He got to work prying open the air vent, during which I stared, transfixed, at the back of the fallen dead man- More specifically, the gaping hole in his back that was gushing out even more blood.

"Oh God... Tell me I didn't do that..."

I received no answer but the satisfying sound of metal hinges creaking open with a snap!.

"Get in!"

I blinked at him before looking back to the door. "Hey, Kevin!"

"What are you doing?"

"We can't just leave him here!"

"He started this! You want to save the traitor?" Mitchell spat.

I grimaced. "I can't leave him! He's been my friend longer than he's been a traitor!"

"He's still a traitor!"

"He's still Kevin!"

"If you don't go in there, I'll get by myself and shove you and this table down! See if he helps you put it up again!" He glared at me. "And you doubt that he will because he's a traitor!"

"I..." I bit my lip, knowing everything that he said was absolutely right, but not entirely sure that he'd just leave me there, filled in a room with adversaries I couldn't see and a guy I thought I

"... I can't!"

"Going once..."

I bit my thumbnails, looking from Kevin to the air vent. Stay in the dead people room, or ditch a guy and go into the air duct? Stay with someone who seemed to know what to do in a crisis, or in a room with a guy who might've started this whole thing in the first place?

"Please reconsider, Mitchell! You can't just leave him-"

"Going /twice/..."

I looked at the body on the floor, a gruesome example of death. Death was inevitable, the only thing you could do was prolong it. By staying in this room, I'd be inviting death to take me. Leaving through the air duct, I'd be leaving a friend- /Friend?/- but fighting for survival.

"Fine, then-"

"I'll go!" I yelled, interrupting Mitchell. I grabbed the opening of the air duct and, stepping on the wall a bit, I pulled myself up and in. I crawled forward a bit, and waited until I heard Mitchell climb in, and the crash of metal behind us- I guess he'd kicked down the tables on his way up.

He was always so smart

"Where now?"

"... Up."

I followed this, crawling through the dark and narrow air shaft, praying that it wouldn't fall.

I always thought to myself that, if worse came to worse, I'd die with dignity. I wouldn't let myself be degraded, I'd go down fighting. I also resolved not to harm another person. If I went down in this place, I'd be fighting as I fell, but I left someone behind. Even though he'd gone and trapped us, he did help us save time by reminding us about the locked door, right? And even if he could've opened it for us, where would we have gone? Down the crashed elevator shaft? Down the never-ending halls? Even if he'd started this in the first place, he'd helped us.

He'd helped us. We left him.

He didn't even try to come. Was he trying to repent by letting us go home free and staying by himself?

Penance and sacrifice weren't so different. Either way, someone was hurt. Human sacrifice, I think, is a horrible thing- So why hadn't I stayed to persuade him to come? I couldn't be heartless, I'd had so much trouble stopping myself from looking back at him.

Maybe I was weak. Maybe that's why I couldn't look at him- I was too scared at what I might see.

Maybe I was bitter. He'd started this, and now the others had disappeared.

Maybe the instinct to survive had overriden the emotion of friendship and compassion.

This place was a battlefield. Only somewhere so violent could induce such chaos. Only a place of evil could force a mind into such hell. Choosing between survival and a friend was the hardest thing I'd ever had to decide, though survival including a closer friend, and the other friend had backstabbed us all.

He'd helped us

He was still the person I thought I knew.

Right?

"You know what I said after I woke up in the morgue?"

"What?"

"I said that being in a room filled with dead bodies was better than the nightmare I'd woken up from."

"But you woke up into another nightmare."

"... Maybe I'll wake up from this."