Unfinished Business - Part One

Dear journal,

It seemed like I had only blinked and the Old Man was nudging me awake. He warned me again that I was different now and I would see things as they really are.

“But you’re ready,” he told me. “And your friend needs you.”

Maricel?

He nodded.

He opened the door of his shack and gestured for me to go. As soon as I stepped out I was expecting some kind of hellscape based on how the Old Man was talking.

But the garage looked the same. Nothing really out of the ordinary.

Until I saw them.

These weren’t the mimics I remembered. They were human—looking. Beautiful yet eerie figures that had an aura that made them ugly at the same time. They seemed to reek of anger, hatred, jealousy and this…emptiness that couldn’t be filled. To be honest, I prefer the mimics over these guys.

I was on what appeared to be the ramp leading down to the 8th Floor. There were three of them at the bottom of it. They looked up at me and smiled.

They started making obscene gestures and doing things that...aren't worth repeating. The thing that disturbed me the most wasn’t the fact that they did what they did, it was the fact that I seemed more receptive than I would have imagined.

I heard the voice of a man, a different voice, shout in my ear as I stood there transfixed by the fluid motions they were making as they drew closer to me.

“DON’T!”

It snapped me out of it. I brought up the Remington and fired. Putting them down and relieved my weapons worked against them.

I proceeded down to the “belly of the beast” as the Old Man had directed me to. The darkness that had blocked me before was no longer there. I could see all the way down and things got worse at each level.

Macabre decorations that made me sick to my stomach and clawed at my very being.

I ran into more of those…people as I made my way down. Some chose aggression, some attempted seduction, others chose to attack my mind.

The shotgun was far more persuasive.

As I neared the final floor, I had to ditch my twelve-gauge companion, I was out of ammo. Probably wasn’t going to find any more. Dead weight.

Pistol at the ready I continued the descent.

There was a trap door at the bottom. Beneath a pile of… the recently deceased we’ll say.

There was a seal of some kind on the door itself. The symbols profane and dark. It reacted to my touch. Burning me. I retracted my hand but I couldn’t help but notice that some of the seal had disappeared when I touched it.

I placed my hand down again and gritted through the pain. When the seal disappeared, so did all the mess and the gore.

An illusion. I guess. I looked at my hand and there were no burns.

I pulled the door open and it revealed a stairway. Descending into an ominous darkness.

I heard Maricel’s laughter…