Road to Hell
Shauna
I sprinted back to the room, crashing into the wall as I did so and almost burst into tears of relief when I saw the shape of my sister huddled up against the wall.
"Sherry," I sobbed, crouching down beside her. "We have to get out of here."
She fell into my arms as I tugged lightly on her shoulder and immediately I was heaving and screaming, my throat burning with acid and black spots dancing in front of my eyes. Sherry lay on my lap, empty sockets staring up at me and bloody scratches down each cheek. I pushed her body away from me, no longer screaming but hyperventilating and unable to tear my eyes away from Sherry.
I moaned her name, sounding like a wounded animal. My hand reached out as if to stroke her hair but I couldn't bring myself to touch her. My palms were already stained with her blood, too much blood and no matter how much I tried to wipe it off onto my jeans; my hands were still red and sticky with my sister’s blood.
I was whimpering by now, crawling backwards away from my twin sister's body, unable to form coherent sentences or even words. I stared at her, at the pool of dark red blood underneath her that looked almost black. I looked, unable to stop looking; unable to stop seeing. I'd left her behind and it was my fault she was dead.
Dead. I let out an inhumane howl of anguish at the thought of the word. My chest was being ripped apart from the inside, something was breaking and splintering apart and tearing me to pieces. I kept screaming and shrieking and howling with anger and loss and guilt. It overtook me so I wasn't Shauna any more. I was just a creature made of pain. I struck out with my fists; hitting the wall and watching the plaster crumble around me. I clawed at the ground and left groove marks in the concrete. I screamed so loud the walls seemed to shake.
When I stopped it felt like hours had passed. I took a few deep breaths, my head spinning. For a few moments, I couldn't remember who I was or where I was or why I was hurting. All I knew was that I was hurting and I wanted to break things, destroy things and do anything to make the pain go away. I swallowed and shivered, feeling as if I was coming up from deep underwater to a whole new world. Then I remembered Sherry. I looked over at her body, then did a double take.
It wasn't her.
It was the definite body of a young girl, but much younger than us. Maybe around ten or eleven. Long dark hair the same shade as ours, but dirty and matted with blood. I took a deep breath, still trembling and edged towards her. Her eyes were closed, but the eyelids looked deflated and I knew I hadn't imagined the empty sockets. The claw marks were still on her cheeks and when I looked at her fingernails I could see blood and flesh underneath them. I shuddered. What would drive such a young girl to do this to herself?
I was dizzy with relief that it wasn't my sister, but I couldn't shake the image of when it had been her. And it had been her. But now it wasn't. I refused to think of her being dead, and wondered if something had made me see Sherry when it had actually been a stranger.
Either way, I wanted to find my twin.
I left the room that had felt like my prison and I felt like I was leaving it a different person. My body felt strange, as if it had been warped and twisted and torn apart before being put back together. I looked fearfully back over my shoulder, wondering what had happened to me in there.
I dragged my eyes away from the room, feeling heavy and tired. The hallway was suddenly much longer and the doors were still wide open. But this time when I peered in, the storage rooms were gone. Instead of boxes and furniture, there were bodies everywhere.
I covered my mouth with my hands, despite the blood on them. I swallowed back bile and acid, forcing myself into each room to examine every body in the fear that one might be my sister. As I turned over and examined each body I wanted to be sick with disgust, but relief it wasn't my sister.
Every body was female and the age range was wide. Some looked as young as six or seven and some looked closer to eighteen or nineteen. They all wore what looked like an old fashioned school uniform and all of them were in varying states of decay. But one thing was clear, and that was that they'd all done this to themselves.
In one of the larger rooms, several young bodies were hanging from the ceiling, skipping ropes turned into makeshift nooses. I actually was sick then and backed out of the room, trying not to inhale too much of the rotten meat stench that clung to the corpses. In the next room I broke down into tears at the sight of a group of girls barely old enough to be in school with their arms slashed and torn and bloody.
I wanted to give up on checking the rooms but I couldn’t shake the fear of Sherry being lost amongst all this horror. I couldn't bear the thought of something happening to her, but I still had the image of her lifeless face tattooed on the inside of my skull and every time I closed my eyes I saw my hands covered in her blood. Now they were covered in the blood of multiple children who'd mutilated themselves and ended their own lives.
Eventually in one of the lasts rooms I found a body that was familiar to me. She was laying face down on the concrete and looked like she was totally okay, but when I rolled her over I saw empty sockets with maggots wriggling in the decaying flesh, and black rotting gums grinning up at me. The flesh on her face hung in ragged, bloody strips and clutched in her bloodied, wounded hand was a stained radio, still crackling with static. I shuddered, remembering talking to the girl earlier. She'd been alive then, and now she was dead. Forcing back another wave of nausea, I plucked the radio out of her hand. Maybe I'd be able to find a news announcement or some way of contacting the outside world. Sherry was better with technology than me, and for the millionth time I wished she were here.
I'd come to the end of the hallway now and I couldn't find my way back to the church. Every door was to a room filled with bodies and blood, there was no way out. I hunched up in the corner, putting my head against my knees and closing my eyes. I wanted everything to just go away and I wept quietly, feeling defeated.
A strange creaking noise made me look up, wiping the tears from my eyes and what I saw almost made me hysterical again. The wallpaper was peeling off the walls before my very eyes, the wall itself crumbling into nothingness. Even the floor beneath me seemed to be melting, revealing metal bars and what looked like a fire way beneath me. The heat was unbearable and the walls melted and burned away until the hallway was just a passageway made of crisscrossing metal bars and strange red strands woven between the metal that seemed to pulse and twitch.
A door had been revealed at the end of the hall, and freaking out I headed towards it. Before I could get halfway there, the door burst open and two figures sprinted towards me. I didn't even get a chance to scream before they crashed into me and we all tumbled to the floor.
"Shauna?"
"Sherry!"
I hugged my twin tightly as we lay on the floor, crying on each other and just staring at each other in marvel and amazement. Sherry looked weary and bruised, but basically unharmed and I wept with relief. It was so good to see her again, to reassure myself that what I'd seen wasn't real.
"We have to get out of here," Sherry gasped, clearly out of breath. "There's something wrong here. Really wrong."
We scrambled to our feet and I got a good look at the person who'd coming running through the door with my sister. He was taller and clearly older than us, well built and had a shock of dark blonde almost brown hair that fell across his eyes, and a wound ran down one cheek.
"C'mon," he muttered in a gruff voice, pushing us down another corridor that had also been revealed when the world went batshit crazy. "We have to go."
We stumbled our way there, hurrying without running. I clasped my sister’s hand, unable to feel the same kind of worry I had before now that I knew she was safe. But just as I thought that, the door she'd come from with the stranger slammed shut and the room started increasing in heat but getting distinctly darker.
I stopped in my tracks, staring back at the door. It was almost as if the darkness was coming through the door, absorbing everything it touched. I was hypnotized watching it, until the man shoved me roughly.
"Run!"
We did, the three of us together in the maze of metal and blood and bodies with the tendrils of darkness licking our heels and burning our skin. All I knew was panic and running, but I managed the vague realisation that this was Hell.
"Sherry," I sobbed, crouching down beside her. "We have to get out of here."
She fell into my arms as I tugged lightly on her shoulder and immediately I was heaving and screaming, my throat burning with acid and black spots dancing in front of my eyes. Sherry lay on my lap, empty sockets staring up at me and bloody scratches down each cheek. I pushed her body away from me, no longer screaming but hyperventilating and unable to tear my eyes away from Sherry.
I moaned her name, sounding like a wounded animal. My hand reached out as if to stroke her hair but I couldn't bring myself to touch her. My palms were already stained with her blood, too much blood and no matter how much I tried to wipe it off onto my jeans; my hands were still red and sticky with my sister’s blood.
I was whimpering by now, crawling backwards away from my twin sister's body, unable to form coherent sentences or even words. I stared at her, at the pool of dark red blood underneath her that looked almost black. I looked, unable to stop looking; unable to stop seeing. I'd left her behind and it was my fault she was dead.
Dead. I let out an inhumane howl of anguish at the thought of the word. My chest was being ripped apart from the inside, something was breaking and splintering apart and tearing me to pieces. I kept screaming and shrieking and howling with anger and loss and guilt. It overtook me so I wasn't Shauna any more. I was just a creature made of pain. I struck out with my fists; hitting the wall and watching the plaster crumble around me. I clawed at the ground and left groove marks in the concrete. I screamed so loud the walls seemed to shake.
When I stopped it felt like hours had passed. I took a few deep breaths, my head spinning. For a few moments, I couldn't remember who I was or where I was or why I was hurting. All I knew was that I was hurting and I wanted to break things, destroy things and do anything to make the pain go away. I swallowed and shivered, feeling as if I was coming up from deep underwater to a whole new world. Then I remembered Sherry. I looked over at her body, then did a double take.
It wasn't her.
It was the definite body of a young girl, but much younger than us. Maybe around ten or eleven. Long dark hair the same shade as ours, but dirty and matted with blood. I took a deep breath, still trembling and edged towards her. Her eyes were closed, but the eyelids looked deflated and I knew I hadn't imagined the empty sockets. The claw marks were still on her cheeks and when I looked at her fingernails I could see blood and flesh underneath them. I shuddered. What would drive such a young girl to do this to herself?
I was dizzy with relief that it wasn't my sister, but I couldn't shake the image of when it had been her. And it had been her. But now it wasn't. I refused to think of her being dead, and wondered if something had made me see Sherry when it had actually been a stranger.
Either way, I wanted to find my twin.
I left the room that had felt like my prison and I felt like I was leaving it a different person. My body felt strange, as if it had been warped and twisted and torn apart before being put back together. I looked fearfully back over my shoulder, wondering what had happened to me in there.
I dragged my eyes away from the room, feeling heavy and tired. The hallway was suddenly much longer and the doors were still wide open. But this time when I peered in, the storage rooms were gone. Instead of boxes and furniture, there were bodies everywhere.
I covered my mouth with my hands, despite the blood on them. I swallowed back bile and acid, forcing myself into each room to examine every body in the fear that one might be my sister. As I turned over and examined each body I wanted to be sick with disgust, but relief it wasn't my sister.
Every body was female and the age range was wide. Some looked as young as six or seven and some looked closer to eighteen or nineteen. They all wore what looked like an old fashioned school uniform and all of them were in varying states of decay. But one thing was clear, and that was that they'd all done this to themselves.
In one of the larger rooms, several young bodies were hanging from the ceiling, skipping ropes turned into makeshift nooses. I actually was sick then and backed out of the room, trying not to inhale too much of the rotten meat stench that clung to the corpses. In the next room I broke down into tears at the sight of a group of girls barely old enough to be in school with their arms slashed and torn and bloody.
I wanted to give up on checking the rooms but I couldn’t shake the fear of Sherry being lost amongst all this horror. I couldn't bear the thought of something happening to her, but I still had the image of her lifeless face tattooed on the inside of my skull and every time I closed my eyes I saw my hands covered in her blood. Now they were covered in the blood of multiple children who'd mutilated themselves and ended their own lives.
Eventually in one of the lasts rooms I found a body that was familiar to me. She was laying face down on the concrete and looked like she was totally okay, but when I rolled her over I saw empty sockets with maggots wriggling in the decaying flesh, and black rotting gums grinning up at me. The flesh on her face hung in ragged, bloody strips and clutched in her bloodied, wounded hand was a stained radio, still crackling with static. I shuddered, remembering talking to the girl earlier. She'd been alive then, and now she was dead. Forcing back another wave of nausea, I plucked the radio out of her hand. Maybe I'd be able to find a news announcement or some way of contacting the outside world. Sherry was better with technology than me, and for the millionth time I wished she were here.
I'd come to the end of the hallway now and I couldn't find my way back to the church. Every door was to a room filled with bodies and blood, there was no way out. I hunched up in the corner, putting my head against my knees and closing my eyes. I wanted everything to just go away and I wept quietly, feeling defeated.
A strange creaking noise made me look up, wiping the tears from my eyes and what I saw almost made me hysterical again. The wallpaper was peeling off the walls before my very eyes, the wall itself crumbling into nothingness. Even the floor beneath me seemed to be melting, revealing metal bars and what looked like a fire way beneath me. The heat was unbearable and the walls melted and burned away until the hallway was just a passageway made of crisscrossing metal bars and strange red strands woven between the metal that seemed to pulse and twitch.
A door had been revealed at the end of the hall, and freaking out I headed towards it. Before I could get halfway there, the door burst open and two figures sprinted towards me. I didn't even get a chance to scream before they crashed into me and we all tumbled to the floor.
"Shauna?"
"Sherry!"
I hugged my twin tightly as we lay on the floor, crying on each other and just staring at each other in marvel and amazement. Sherry looked weary and bruised, but basically unharmed and I wept with relief. It was so good to see her again, to reassure myself that what I'd seen wasn't real.
"We have to get out of here," Sherry gasped, clearly out of breath. "There's something wrong here. Really wrong."
We scrambled to our feet and I got a good look at the person who'd coming running through the door with my sister. He was taller and clearly older than us, well built and had a shock of dark blonde almost brown hair that fell across his eyes, and a wound ran down one cheek.
"C'mon," he muttered in a gruff voice, pushing us down another corridor that had also been revealed when the world went batshit crazy. "We have to go."
We stumbled our way there, hurrying without running. I clasped my sister’s hand, unable to feel the same kind of worry I had before now that I knew she was safe. But just as I thought that, the door she'd come from with the stranger slammed shut and the room started increasing in heat but getting distinctly darker.
I stopped in my tracks, staring back at the door. It was almost as if the darkness was coming through the door, absorbing everything it touched. I was hypnotized watching it, until the man shoved me roughly.
"Run!"
We did, the three of us together in the maze of metal and blood and bodies with the tendrils of darkness licking our heels and burning our skin. All I knew was panic and running, but I managed the vague realisation that this was Hell.