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I stepped off the train onto the platform and hastily made my way to the empty mall it was 9:00pm after all. It should’ve been shutting in 30 minutes. Not tonight though, tonight was gunna be nothing like I’d planned.

I came to a fountain shortly after getting out the subway platforms. Something glistening in the water caught my eye, so I wondered over to it to see what it was. A key loop lied there all rusted in the water. I picked it up immediately, “What a curious thing to find in a fountain…” I thought to myself. I chucked it into my back pack and carried on my journey into hell. I walked past a few stores, all of them with their shutters closed. This didn’t surprise me, it was late they should’ve been shutting anyway. Who cares if it’s a little early, I just hoped that the store I was going for wasn’t shut.

I walked past a few more stores until I came to a kiosk with free maps of the mall. I took one and located the gun store. I made my way to it, not taking notice of the bloodied walls and shut up shops. As I walked into the store, I heard a noise…I wasn’t sure what caused it. It clearly wasn’t a human one, and it was too surreal for a machine. It was a kind of scratching, hair raising moan.

I rounded the corner to where the pistols were kept to hear a buzzing noise from a radio on the floor and in the middle of the aisle was the most horrible, distorted, mangled lump of flesh on the floor. It smelled putrid and made a horrible wheezing noise as it breathed. It started to stand up in a shaky, but determined way. It looked over to me, I was scared stiff. I didn’t even realise it was moving toward me until it lent backwards and started spraying a thick, black ‘oil’ at me. I hastily grabbed a gun next to me and loaded it with the bullets I’d picked up on the way. I quickly moved out of the way of the black ooze as it hurtled through the air at me and unloaded a round of bullets into the creature’s chest. It wailed in pain as it was flung backwards through the air onto the hard, unforgiving concrete floor. It landed with a thump and a crack of bones. Shaking on the floor it spat a strange liquid out of its wounds and gushed the black ooze onto the floor. Then finally stopped moving… I fell to the floor to scared to realise what had just happened.

Half an hour past before I could start to comprehend what that was, a monster. Most definitely, I had no idea where it’d come from. But it was there, lying in front of me, stone cold dead. I struggled to my feet, and clasped the pistol in my hand, whilst picking up the buzzing radio on the floor next to the monster. Still dazed I walked to the register and put my credit card on the desk, not realising that there was no cashier. I said “I’d like these shells too.” And picked them up and put them in my bag. Leaving my card, I staggered out the shop and grabbed the keys from my bag, I ran as fast as I could through the now dark mall, to the janitors office. I knew I’d find a torch in there to light my way out of here.

After finding the torch, I walked to the door only to discover that it was locked. “How?!” I thought to myself, “How can this be locked?” I grabbed the key loop and tried to open the door with the keys, nothing. “What the hell!” I tried breaking the door down by kicking it, but still to no avail. I looked around the office for an alternative way out. I saw the ventilation shaft and immediately climbed up to it to see if I could break it open. Success! I chucked the cover to the floor and scrambled into the vents. I crawled and crawled, until I came to the end of the shaft. After breaking down the other cover, I ‘smoothly’ fell out and landed on the concrete with a thud.

I got up to see a piece of graffiti on the wall opposite from me. I couldn’t make out from this distance what it said, with this thick fog surrounding me. So I ambled over to it with a slight limp and was astonished and confused to read “You! You filthy, pathetic, no good, snivelling, waste of flesh! Why’d you do this?!” Taken aback by it, I walked off down the alley into the street. I looked to the right and saw a library; I thought this place would be a good haven for now. As I entered the library I saw the place in tatters, books strewn across the floor with pages ripped out, tables flipped, lights smashed, windows shattered….It was clearly not the safest of places. But still I persisted in walking in and sitting down to think things through.

I found a chair which wasn’t snapped and stood it up; I sat down and started to think to myself about what was going on. This clearly wasn’t normal and what the hell was that thing I’d seen only an hour ago! Before I could make any sense out of it, I heard a shrieking and rustling up in the rafters. My radio started to crackle eerily at me and I thought it wise to make my way in to the back room quickly. Upon entering it, I discovered a red notepad on the floor with bits of pages sticking out of it. I picked it up and flicked to the first page, it read “The only people in here, who survive, are those who are truly alive.” This confused me greatly, what a profound riddle to write on the first page of a notepad, I looked through a few other pages and came across a note saying, “The code to the basement door is written on the back of 4 Shakespeare books.” I put the note pad in my bag and turned around to re-enter the destroyed library. I sprinted to the famous novels section to avoid being attacked by whatever was scuttling above in the rafters. As I got there, I saw 4 books on the floor, I quickly snatched at them and made my hasty escape to the back room once again.

Upon re-entry I flicked on my torch and scanned the covers and spines of all the 4 books, the covers had numbers written on them. I aligned them in different orders and tried different codes on the basement doors lock until I finally cracked it open. I flung the door to the basement open and scurried down the stairs into the ever growing darkness that engulfed me. I reached the bottom of the stairs after what seemed like an eternity and rested against the wall. After a short period of time I heard some light footsteps coming down the corridor towards me. I was delighted to notice that my radio was not crackling, I was safe….for now. A small figure of a teenaged girl stepped into the beam of light from my torch. I said to her “Get out of here, it’s dangerous.” She looked at me with a harsh glaze and said “Shut up, you vile fiend. It is you who is the dangerous one!” Immediately I denied the statement when such terrible things were lurking around, she seemed to shrug it off and said “Sameal only brings the worst of the worst here. And what you did to her was truly awful.” Suddenly I stood bolt right up and said “Who the hell are you talking about!?” She replied “Mary-Beth Duranndel!” I was infuriated at this remark and retorted “I’d never hurt Mary! She is my girlfriend, I’d never put a finger on her!” The girl spat back at me “Denial is the worst sin a man can commit.” After this the girl hurried off into the dark abyss of the hall way.

I was left shocked by what she had said, “Nothing in this world makes sense anymore!” I thought as I leaned back against the wall. Whilst in a rut against the wall, I hadn’t heard the faint crackling of my radio, warning me against the beast approaching. All of a sudden, “Shuaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh”, I raised my pistol. Bang, bang, bang! The thing fell to the ground with a thud. I staggered in fear up to the pulsating lump of meat lying in its own bile and blood. I kick it and step back suddenly, just encase it’s still alive, nothing. I slumped back against the wall to calm my nerves. Suddenly I hear the faint crackle of my radio emitting static. In the distance I hear dull thumps of heavy feet and the shrill, harsh scratching of metal on metal. I looked to the corner of the hallway in terror…

I scrambled to my feet and ran in the opposite direction till I got to a door. All the time the shrill ear piercing, scratching noise edged closer along the corridor. I fumbled with the door handle only to realise it was locked. I turned around, readying myself, reloading my pistol. Closer and closer the screeching and thumping got, darkness surrounding me I only had the noises to register where this terror was.

Frantically I fired bullets in to the pitch black hallway, hearing them deflect off of something metal. I knew my unseen assailant was close. Suddenly a large, looming figure stood over me with its great knife raised in the air about to strike….I black out.

Groggily I opened my eyes and sat up in a hazy state. I heard the faint sounds of a jukebox in the background playing The Gallery by Muse. As I strained to stand up I remembered what happened sometime earlier that day. Then it dawned on me, “how long was I out? A few hours, minutes, days? How did I end up in this diner?” I ran to the door to get outside only to be blinded by the first glimpse of daylight I’d seen in a long time. There was a thick fog covering the town and a heavy blanket of snow carpeting the ground.

I walked slowly in a kind of awe about the light I was relieved greatly to be out of that hell hole of a place. As I made my way through the fog smothered town, it slowly dawned on me that it was completely deserted.

After an hour or so walking, I came to the edge of a lake. In the dock there was a paddle boat. I decided my best choice to get out of here would be the boat. “All the roads are blocked off anyway”, I thought to myself. So I stepped in to the creaky boat and started to row. I didn’t row in any particular direction it was too foggy to tell where I was going anyway. As I rowed and rowed, I started to think of a reason for why all this was happening to me? Eventually I got to the shore of some island, I walked up and into the graveyard in front of me. The first thing that struck me here was that none of the tombstones were marked, I carried on walking until I came across one that was marked. It read “Here lays the remains of beloved Mary-Beth Duranndel, slaughtered by her boyfriend. May she rest in piece while his soul burns in the depths of hell.”

I fell to my knees, everything made sense now. The graffiti, the riddle, the things that teenaged girl said. I was a cold blooded murder, I must have blanked it all out after I did it. That’s why I was brought here, to suffer and pay for my sins. Not to escape and live a happy life. I can’t believe it, why would I have done such a thing? Wait a second, that girl, she said something about Sameal bringing me here. She said he only brings the “worst of the worst” here. Oh god….What I have I done? I can’t go on living this way.

I took the pistol from my belt, pulled the slide back far enough to cock the pistol, I raised it to my chin, the hammer clicked back with a sudden jerk and flicked forward at a phenomenal speed, this sent the bullet hurtling up the barrel and releasing it into the soft, pulpy flesh of my neck. Ripping apart my tongue, the roof of my mouth, the tender flesh of my brain and out through the hard shell of my skull with bit’s of brain and other organs attached to it’s head. Whoompf, I hit the floor with a solid slam.

I got what I deserved…