From until months after this occurrence I had lived on a farm, a nice secluded self sustaining plot of land worthy of a human life to exist in. On days in which I wasn’t tending to the animals, structures, or plants of the farm I was exploring the limitless land that walled off my farm from most, people whom saw nothing in the expanse of grass and hills. Many times on my journeys of needless exploring I would see a shimmer of light coming to my sense of sight, almost blinding me.
Glass was the only thing I could think of that would cause a reflection of the sun so powerful it bathed in the power of the sun itself, a strange thing to be behold as a large hill fell below the reflection. Meaning it needed to have to been a building of glass tall enough to survey well above the confines of the hill. Over and over I glazed over the reflection, casting doubt that I would want to see the lords of capitalism mow over was once was a paradise of my farm and endless expanse of bright green grass.
And so I had ignored the reflection for years, but eventually my needless curiosity overcame me one day. The day had already started itself unfortunate, building its paranoia and despair to me when one of my cows had died. Suffering from the loss of good cattle I needed an escape from the day so far. Later I could deal with it thoroughly. I was staring at above, searching for a deal of satisfaction, at least for a short sprint of satisfaction for now. And that’s when the reflection of the monarchs building caught my eye. I needed to see at last what the monarchs had planned for my land. It wasn’t going to be a happy conclusion but a distraction nonetheless.
Trudging towards the hill, my shoes wetting from the rain forming mud of the grasslands yesterday. From the hill I walked in dangerous curiosity, and saw a abominable sight. A large artificial pyramid building laid upon my sights. It had forcibly rooted out the grass around it, having only mud surrounding it. The building covered in opac glass only had one entrance that my eyes could detect. It was a large steel door covered in vines, an entrance seemingly impossible for me to prance on. Moments grazed by as I stared at the monarchs pyramid. I had lost track of time when the sound of metal loudly screeched to move. The door was moving, slowly it was consumed by the left of the wall.
From the inside of the building a man in a lab coat desperately ran out. Despite my greatest attempts, the sight of the man covered in blood revealed itself to my eyes. He only ran a few feet out the door before coughing up his own red lining and falling over on his own knees. A trail of red was before him. Everything in me pleaded home. But from me trying to look away from the now presumingly deceased corpse I had spotted a figure inside the building.
I couldn’t look away from the thing lurking on the side of the stairway railing. It was a mountain lion drenched in blood, its eyes retching with nothing, yet at the same time pulsing with malice. Its mouth hung agar, its saliva causing a pool on the floor. The thing was in an advanced stage of rabies. Or at least a disease that was near rabies. I had once found a rat with rabies but it wasn’t as pronounced as this. And the thing. It turned its head up to the ceiling and created a horrible sound. It was a roar of many screams - voices pleading for help, distorted by the creatures lungs so much that the words were incomprehensible.
The creature turned it head down and to the side. Giving me a look of evil curiosity. And before long it ran away in a twisted prance to the right of somewhere. My body was frozen for what felt like a while. Thoughts storming in my head, one preposterous thought overpowered all that was reasonable. The thought overpowered even my nervous system. The thought was the idea of finding the reason of these occurrences. An idiotic thought I know, but…. I wasn’t thinking normally.
Irrationally my body started to move toward the pyramid’s abyss. After many grueling moments I was inside the pyramid. My mind could now see a slight amount of shed remains from the desensitization of it all, but it still wasn’t enough to protect my undigested food from erupting after seeing the gore that the screamer’s prowl had commenced. Organs, limbs, intestines. So much in such little time. My eyes and nose watered from the aura of death. My legs and mind were different from each other at the time. I was trying not to faint from the sights, and the legs were shifting towards the stairs that split in the middle of what was I assumed to be the main waiting room.
Gagging all the way through the stairs, I and the legs reached the top of the stairs. Bloodshed was thorough everywhere the sights of my now barely functioning eyes could muster to see, but at least there weren’t fresh corpses in sight now. Three doors on the left, middle, and right of me revealed a decision for me. If I were to continue this fruitless endeavor, where would I go? Signs were placed slightly above the doors. My eyes were now starting to function well enough for me to read that the middle was to the security offices, that the left was for the storage unit, and the right was for the laboratory.
Struggling to keep my mind at a rate good enough to decide, I stood there silently weighing my options. The storage unit may have cognition for what this place was but so could the laboratory. Though the laboratory was most likely the origin for the mountain screamer so it may have been the best not to stride in. Lastly, the security offices. They might have information, they may have weapons and or survivors and a way of finding emergency services. It may have been obvious from the start, but it was always going to be the security offices weighing over the others.
And so, I drifted my way towards the opened doors of the security offices. The blood wasn’t as indecent as the waiting room but the many branching corridors with zero direction were tolling on me. Every direction looked the exact same and ended with the same windowless door. Blindly, I went trudged my way into the middle door of an intersection. There was no reasoning anymore. As I walked the long corridor noises started to emit from behind me.
It was a drip of a liquid, the slight wisp of breath, and a soft pad of feet. Paws. With adrenaline lining my systems, I bolted down the corridor before hearing the screamer emit its blood curdling scream once again and give chase to me. Its paws edged on the floor, getting louder everytime I heard it land again. Every single shred of power in me wedged itself into my calves yet I could still feel the screamer gaining incredible distance between me. I was now reaching for the end of the corridor and striving to get around the corner which ended this despairing tunnel. Almost slipping on my heels I rounded the corner and saw a savior of metal rise in my vision to rescue me.
A metal door was weaseled between the two walls of the short corridor and my eyes greeted me to a sign laying above the door, “ Security office 3, main. “. The painful bolt to the office door was thankfully brief and I was already opening the door when I could hear the screamer thumping its body into the wall from rounding the corner so quickly. It was a matter of a couple precious seconds if the screamer was going to maul me. I opened the door just wide enough for my body to wedge through and attempted to quickly dispatch of the existence of the opening. But the screamer had finished its stride to the door was now pawing at the small opening of which I was now exhaustingly failing to close with all my might.
The screamer’s malicious power was starting to overthrow my will to live when I had a sudden burst of adrenaline and kicked one of the murderous paws away with my almost depleted foot. The outcome of this kick resulted in the screamer losing the upper hand and letting the chance of the opening to fizzle out entirely. Now the door was closed and I was safe. Safe in this standalone door with only one chamber to get into. When I slowly turned my body around I could see a room filled with nobody but the room itself and me.
No blood was in sight, no grizzly corpses around and no severed limbs, and there weapons of safety, ones that could dispatch any animal within seconds, displayed on wide open shelves encasing the walls leading to the middle of the room. Of which a couple desks, chairs and big monitors were shown. This assured me that I was surely now safe, a room I could wait in till. Till when? I had an estimate of where the screamer would be due to the monitors displaying some of the rooms and corridors of this place, but I would to damned to luck due to the screamer eventually hearing me with how long it took to get from the mouth of the building to this safe space.
Sadly, I was trapped. And a sight of something made me realize just how trapped I was. On one of the monitors displayed the first corridor of the security offices. Of which I saw men. Running men in what looked like swat team apparels. I knew what the purpose of them were, they were here to dispose of the screamer. And me. Whatever ruled this building and the team of men heading to my location would surely not want loose ends. And they knew of my location because a camera lay in the corner of the room I squatted in.
I took a weapon of untrustworthy protection with me. Though I knew it wasn’t going to save me from a team of trained personal, I needed a way of killing the screamer. I had a plan, a plan to hide in the janitors room I had passed while on the intersection. The metal door fumbled open and I ran towards the short corridor, ready to brace the corner and fight against time. The corner flew past me as I chambered my pains away to fight the clock of the long corridor. Slowly my pains escaped and weighed me down, slowing me down. I couldn’t slow down now. I couldn’t slow down now.
Without notice of my prior visions I saw the door of the corridor in reach of me, and I tore it open, almost fumbling down on my knees in the process. I spat and the ground and continued to harm my legs by running further, speed still capped down from its prior peak. I was so close to the janitor room, it was the left option of the intersection. And so I rounded the corner, into the short corridor and slammed myself against the door of the janitors room.
I was in. I had pushed myself my knees before hearing the sounds of loud anchored steps of a steel toed team. And that’s when I realized my idiotic mistake. I couldn’t hide here. I could have never hid here because there would be a camera that would stream my location to a individual that would call out my location into the helmets of the team. I quietly laughed with the tears that crawled down my face. My head was in my arms when the pounding of steps got quieter. They slowly fizzled out and flooded my mind in with relief.
A moment later and my head was looking up at the room. Closets lay about for storage and benches were around but not a single camera. A miracle helped me live. They for some reason passed over the opportunity to have a camera in the janitors room. Flourishing in relief I stood up and pushed open the door. I only had a couple short corridors left to leave this godforsaken place. Though in my haste I had left an item of protection behind.
The corridor passed me as I ran out of it and round the corner. The next corridor lead to nothing, my legs somehow now at full capacity of speed. The next short corridor also lead to the success, as I ended my rally of running and pushed open the now closed doors of the corridor leading to the entrance room. The entrance room leading to….
As I flung myself to the top of the entrance room a fearful sight worked its way into me. The screamer was to the left of me. It growled at me before screaming loudly. It was so close that one quick pounce could end me. I stared intently at the screamer before it crawled down to the floor and looked up at me. In less than a second it pounced at me and I, reacting before the sight of him moving reached my brain, lounged to the direction of the glass railing and with all of the force of my body, and broke the glass railing.
For a milla second I was falling. For the next I was hanging onto the ledge. There was a slight amount of concrete that remained away from the railing that hung me. My fingers ached for holding the mass of my body for even the moment before the screamer once again rung its fear inducing scream, this time it felt that it was filled with anger. A couple moments later and my finger ached longer, my panic starting to rise seeing no way of getting out of this situation lest I attempt to crawl away with broken legs or a concussion.
That was until loud explosions rung in the building. No not explosions, they just sounded like them in the quiet yet panicked moments of me hanging. They were in fact gunshots, running from what I presumed was the team disposing of the pure evil of the screamer. “ Target 3 down “ I heard one of the team members say. A second later and I heard them exiting to what I assumed to be the storage unit corridor, as I heard doors fling open and their steps getting quieter.
Now all I had to do was climb back up, easier said than done. It took so much energy that I didn’t have to lift myself onto stable ground again. The first try I attempted only lead to a depletion of valuable energy, the second causing the same outcome. I started to panic, thinking that I couldn’t possibly rise up before the team got me. But that panic was the cause of the last of my adrenaline. And that small sliver of adrenaline was enough to lift me up onto stable ground.
I laid there, panting as I looked up at the grey concrete ceiling. I was free. I didn’t realize I was walking outside the building until I felt the vines of grass touch my legs. The walk was long yet untiring and peaceful. When I was on the hill that separated my home from the hellish building, I stared at the pyramid. It looked back at me, in a way that felt as if it was agitated that I escaped unharmed…..
Recently I started hearing noises outside my house, noises of a large animal of sorts. This field doesn’t tend to have animals large enough to create sounds that loud, so I was fearful when I investigated it. With a flashlight in hand I stepped outside and created a beam of light to see anything of notice. Far away in the distance I could see a bear, and it could see me. A large grizzly bear with a wide open mouth. I hope its open mouth wasn’t open to let out saliva, for that would strike the failure of the pyramids owners, the failure of humanity. I haven’t seen the bear since but I have heard it. I had moved away as quickly as I could accomplish, in hopes that I can escape this thing. But like rabies, this bear can spread its malice. For I have seen animals start to act more aggressive.
And I even saw one foaming at the mouth.