Bruhhhh by

No matter how fast I ran, I could still hear the monstrous footsteps getting closer and closer. It was so close now, I could hear its static-like growling. I dodged around the trees and zig-zagged all around, but all that did was let it get closer. I could hear its loud shrieks on top of its growl. In front of me, I could see some sort of wardrobe fade in from the mists. Suddenly, I felt a force slam into me, and everything went black.

I woke up in my bed in a cold sweat. I'd had that same nightmare a few times. This was the third time, but I've never heard that loud screeching or gotten so close to that wardrobe. Does it mean something? I wondered. Father’s voice traveled up the stairs, calling me for breakfast. The smell of pancakes drifted into my room and lifted me out of my bed, pushing thoughts of my dream out of my head. As I come into the kitchen, I see my dad coming away at the stovetop.

“Hey, sweetie. Are you hungry?” Aaron Staff is quite the guy. He’s probably the nicest man you’d ever meet. It certainly is a shame that, despite being so amazing, his wife - my mother - died shortly after I was born. Despite this, he’s still very kind and always sporting his dazzling smile. His big shape makes him seem like a tough guy, but he’s a real softy inside.

“Absolutely famished. That smells amazing!” I, on the other hand, am quite small by comparison. I’ve been told that it just adds to my natural nerd-ish beauty, with long curly black hair and glasses, gray eyes and a “glittering smile,” but I think they’re just being nice. You’d think I’d be bigger, but I’m just shorter than the average 6th (going to 7th) grader. I look even smaller in my “2 sizes too big” shirt, but I like the way they look and feel. I sit down at the table and await the glory of pancakes.

“Here ya go, Rebecca. Fresh pancakes, hot off the grill.” My father sets down a plate of pancakes, complete with syrup and powdered sugar. “Are you ready for our trip?”

I had packed about half of my bag already, so we didn’t take too long adding a few more items to my suitcase. After we finished packing, we climbed into the car and drove off to the airport.

While on the road, dad asked me, “Say, what sort of bad dreams?” Hesitantly, I told him that it featured me running in a misty forest and being chased down by an unseen monster.

“Not much to say about it, really,” I stated. We sat in silence for what felt like forever before eventually deciding to bang our heads to the radio until we reached the airport.

A few hours later, we’re stepping into Arizona. “Shoot,” father suddenly exclaims. “I completely forgot to book the hotel, we’re gonna need to find one for our stay.”

That’s not like him to just forget something so important. He pulls out his phone and begins to look up local hotels. As he goes through, he makes various thinking/considering noises. Peeking out the window, I see a towering brick hotel building not too far from where we were standing. “What about there?”

“We’ve set in,” growled a massive shadowed figure. “Good,” stated a second, much taller indistinct shape. “Prepare for guests…” The first beast smiles viciously and states, “With pleasure…”

He seemed too enthusiastic, too odd. Father didn’t question it though, he just accepted the key and got into the elevator. Without input, the elevator begins to descend. A smooth song begins playing on the speakers of the elevator. Slowly, we descended deeper into the hotel. Despite the rather nice music, I couldn’t help but feel that something was off…

The elevator doors open, revealing what looked like the front desk, complete with a bell and keys - one key, actually - hanging from the corkboard at the back. Littered about were suitcases on carts, empty carts, random litter like cups, and a suspiciously low amount of people. Noone was here but us.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” Dad walks up to the bell and rings it. Although the bell rang, nobody came. He rang it a few more times before the bell stopped ringing and started clicking instead.

“Do we let oursel-” I’m interrupted by the elevator suddenly closing and ascending back up. I turn back to the elevator and realize that a button to call the elevator was not actually there. “Uh oh.”

Father looks back at the key on the corkboard behind the desk, then circles the desk and grabs the key. “Might as well move forward. Maybe there is a perfectly good explanation.”

He takes the key over to the only door in the room, a door marked with the number 0001. He puts the key into the lock and the lock falls off, the door swinging open automatically. Overhead, a light turned on and a “beep” was heard. Beyond the door was a hall lined with bookshelves, desks, and the occasional painting.

I look over at Dad. Slowly, he steps into the strange hall. Once it seemed apparent that we weren’t going to die or something, I followed suit. As we turned the corner of the hall, I noticed another door. This one was labeled 0002. “How far could these doors go?” I asked aloud.

“I’m not sure, hon. There really is only one way to find out.” Slowly, we approached the second door. Behind it was a different hall. This one was more of a T-shape, with a staircase branching up toward a door with two boards nailed onto it, as well as a straight path to a door marked 0003. “I think I see a pattern,” I joke.

Curiosity gets the better of me and I decide to open a desk against the wall. Inside the bottom drawer, I found a few pencils and a brass disc. Opening the next, I found a shiny gold coin and more junk. When I opened the top drawer, which contained more pencils and a few more coins, a previously unseen spider suddenly jumped out of the drawer onto my face and bit down. I quickly beat it off, shouting out in fear. Dad runs over and attempts to stomp the spider, but it’s already gone. The bite throbbed a bit, but the pain was small.

Not too long after the spider, we crossed Door 0013. As soon as it opened, the lights flickered briefly. Behind us, I suddenly hear a very familiar sound. A distorted roaring. Father had heard it too, and was looking for somewhere to hide. I notice a pair of wardrobes next to me and immediately climb into one. Dad notices and climbs into the other. The thundering footsteps get louder, then a massive black beast rushes straight past our wardrobes. I hear dad step out a few seconds later, but I'm too scared to leave.

"get out" A voice whispers in my ear. I turn around, but can't see anything. "Get out," the voice says, louder. I begin to hyperventilate, frozen with fear. "G E T O U T. " I fall backwards out of the wardrobe and land painfully on the ground. The room is dark, and I can see broken glass on the ground. I get up and can see that every single light in the room has been shattered, with dark wisps of what looks like smoke coming off of them.

“That was it. My dream. The thing that chased me.” My vision starts to clear. I hadn’t even noticed it was blurred in the first place. Dad’s voice starts fading back in.

At Door 0026, we heard strange noises as we opened the door. The room beyond was pitch black, even more so than the room where that monster rushed through. We couldn’t see anything in the room, so we simply walked forward and hoped. On the opposite side of the long hallway, the next door had swung open and the lights once again flickered, indicating that rushing beast’s return. As we exited the room and hid away, I couldn’t help but feel like something was missing…

Door 0032 is when something new happened. The lights flickered and we hid, but nothing came. When I climbed out of the wardrobe, I finally noticed a strange black fluid was leaking out of a small hole in the wall. As I looked, it suddenly opened up to reveal…

“UGH! Dad, there’s an eye on the wall here!” I opened the dresser that was directly below the eye and picked up a flashlight inside. Not even thinking about the strangeness of a flashlight in a dresser drawer, I took it by the end and smacked the eye with as much force as I could muster. The eye let out a horrifying shriek and flinched in that fluttering that normal eyes would when you poke it, but then continued to stare at me. I stepped away from the eye slowly, refusing to break eye contact with it until we entered the next room. I turned around to see a long hall that branched off into bedrooms, similar to a hotel hallway. The door at the other end I could see was locked, just like Door 0001. But the detail that stood out to me most…

“Wow, that’s a lot of eyes,” Dad states. More eyes were lining the wall, each one staring intently at me and Dad. We decided to split up and explore the bedrooms. I walked into the first bedroom and spotted a dresser, a bed, a bookshelf, a typewriter, and another eye. When I looked at the eye, it flinched slightly as if expecting to be struck. Ignoring the eye, I investigated the dresser and found a few more weird gold coins. Moving to the next room, which had all of what the previous one had aside from the typewriter, I found nothing in the dresser. Dad suddenly called out that he had found the key. Entering Door 0034, we see yet another pitch dark room. Turning on my flashlight, I can see even more eyes, so many that they practically line the walls. Still I could feel like something was missing in these dark rooms… At the end of this short hallway was Door 0035.

At Door 0037, the eyes all disappeared from the walls. The hallway we had entered was very grand in nature, having large windows on both sides in intervals to reveal the never ending rainy night outside.

We begin to walk down the Grand Hall. Outside one of the windows, I notice a smiling face looking at me intently. I couldn’t help but smile back at it and wave. As I turned away from it, I could’ve sworn I saw a claw-like hand waving back…

Just before we reached the end of the hall, I felt the sudden urge to turn around. We turned around and saw that a large glob of black goo had gathered near the entrance. Unexpectedly, some kind of human thing starts climbing out of the goo. From where I was, I could see that it was made of the same black stuff, and had one singular eye that glowed maliciously. When it stood on its feet, it started running straight for us. Acting faster than I ever could, Dad picks me up and runs through Door 0038. Inside the room, objects began to fall over and make obstacles. Dad dodged around and over the stuff with relative ease, crossing another door.

The next room was a crossroads, going in three directions. One of the doors was boarded up, the other had no doorknob, one had a light and looked like the other doors we had gone through. In the center of the room was a pile of junk. All of this I noticed in almost an instant. I quickly exclaim, “Turn left! That’s where we need to go!” and Dad goes through the door. The next two rooms repeated the other rooms.

When we reached the fifth room, I heard the chasing creature scream at us. Black goo hands burst through the windows and grasp around. Chandeliers on the ceiling fall down and light on fire. Dad evades around the hands, but accidentally runs directly into the second chandelier. Stumbling, he falls directly into the door at the end of the hall. We both go sprawling, the wind knocked out of us. I could hear the monster getting closer, until suddenly I heard a slam. Dad had managed to shut the door and the creature had slammed directly into it. It banged heavily on the door while we hobbled away into Door 0043.

“No matter…” The silhouette’s long arms began to reach around the room, groping at the wall until it found a particular book. “I’ll take care of them myself…” Pulling the book, a passage opened up and the silhouette walked through.

After another run-in with the black beast thing from before, we push through Door 0049. Beyond is a room with a bookshelf on one side and a table on the other. The door on the opposite end of us ---Door 0050--- was unlike any of the other doors we had seen. It was as tall as the room, with wooden supports on both sides. Lining the door was what looked like gold. Beyond the door, I could hear a sound akin to a car engine trying to start. Dad was still hurt from the fire, and I was terrified out of my wits. What on earth could be behind that door? Slowly, we push through the door.

Behind it was a vast library. At the end of the center lane was a bust of an unknown person. Books stuck out of shelves. Debris from fallen items were scattered around. Barely visible, I could see a desk for checkout. A landing was at the end of the room, an identical door to the one we had opened was locked by a code padlock.

Suddenly, the door we had walked through audibly beeped. When it did, the most terrifying thing I had ever seen came around from behind one of the shelves. Its skin was flesh colored, ordained with a ribcage wrapped around its chest. Its arms were longer than its body, almost noodle like. And its face. Oh, its face. It had a circular maw of teeth in replacement of any recognizable creature's face. When it growled, its interior lit up and its mouth glowed with a strange yellow light. And it was charging straight at us.

It doesn't have eyes, I realize. Dad seemed to notice this too, as he gestures for me to be quiet. He crouched down next to me, whispering, "Move quietly. We need to get to that door on the landing." I nod, swiftly and silently moving left, around a bookshelf, and behind the check out desk. I can see dad moving down the center, then left to go up the stairs to the landing. However, at the top of the stairs, one of the boards softly creaks. I barely hear it. The monster's footsteps suddenly sound much closer than before…

Thinking fast, dad grabs a nearby couch and places it on the small stairs, along with some planks. The creature reaches the stairs and, feeling the strange obstruction, roars while stomping away. It sounded furious.

Dad bends over the short railing, gesturing for me to come over. Silently, I creep over and take his hand. He swings me over the railing. We both creep up to the large padlock, discovering 5 rotating dials and a button. I take one of the dials and spin it. 10 numbers. I look up at dad, who takes the lock and takes a random guess at the code. When he pushes the green button, all 5 numbers click back to zero. A scowl crosses his face. I sigh softly. This is gonna take a while. I sit down, with my back to a bookshelf, as dad continues to try and guess the code and the monster stomps around.

Something catches my eye. A book, more brightly colored than the rest around it. I grab it from the shelf and open it. All the pages aside from two are fused together. The first page just has a large triangle on it, the other has a large "2". Weird, I think to myself. I set the book on the ground, where I can find it later for future reference. Now that I look out at the library, I can see a few other bright books.

"Psst! Dad!" I whisper-shout. He turns to me and leans down so I can whisper in his ear. "I found a book with a number. Maybe I can find the code." He gives me a thumbs up, then turns back to brute-forcing the lock.

My feet are light on the ground as I gracefully dodge around the flesh beast and wind through the bookshelves, grabbing as many bright books as I can. I find 8, including the one from earlier. I set the books behind the check-out desk and open them, sorting through them. I grab a piece of paper and write down a few codes, dashing up the stairs to hand it off to dad. He looks it over and smiles at me, trying the first of several codes.

"REBECCA!" My father shouts out across the library. Almost immediately, I hear a roaring. One of triumph. I hear a tearing, followed by silence. I don't move for the longest time, the silence only broken now by the returning footsteps of the monster. Silently, I creep out from beneath the desk and walk up the stairs, shaking. When I reach the sight of the door, all my breath shoots out.

The floor, lock, and door were painted red from the pooling blood. The blood poured almost endlessly from the decapitated body of my father, splayed on the ground and covered in gashes. Several chunks of flesh were missing from his chest and arms. Lying next to my feet lay his head, frozen with a face of shock, a face saying, "This is it."

I sink to my knees in despair. We were so close. We almost got out. I move over to the lock and look at it. Wiping away the mess covering the numbers, I reveal the last code he had tried to put in: 74266. I click the green button, and the lock clicks to 0. A tear streams down my face.

"Now then, what're we to do with you?" A deep voice says behind me. I turn in fear. The monster towers over me, claws behind it's back. I'm too afraid to react as it brushes one of them through my hair. Tears run faster down my face as I look on it terror.

"Don't bother running, I can hear your heartbeat… You poor little soul. I'm guessing the big human was someone dear. Oh yes, you're sorrow! It flows and ebbs from within in waves! You mourn him." It cocks its head. "Pity. For you, of course. I feed on despair, and you ebb it more than your dead little daddy does. Not something I foresaw."

"Ah, a female. That makes more sense. You know," it continues. "He has such hopes for you. His hope is strong. He wants you to get away." It makes a chuckle. "Yeah, right. My hotel is too large. My power too great. Not even the dead can leave." It holds up its other claw. Floating in it is a small blue light, glowing dimly. It's whispering in my father's voice, "Rebecca? It's dark, honey. Where are you? Hello? Becca?"

I look at the light in awe. "Dad? Dad, I'm here. It's OK…" He doesn't seem to hear me. He keeps whispering, looking for me. I look up at the monster in anger. "Let him go," I demand.

"It's not that easy. Even if I release his soul, he'll just drift here, invisible to all. Begging constantly just for you, never to comply." It chuckles. "And you can't just sit here, idle. I'll grow bored, and you'll die from something. You will drift like him, looking only for his comfort, never getting it. If you escape somehow, his soul will remain. You'll die out there, never to see him again."

"You might notice I'm shorthanded on servants. Rush was useless, Seek wasn't helpful, and Hide is just slow. I want another." It bends down to match eyeline with me, despite not having eyes. Its breath stinks of rot. "I want you."

"The lights can see my servants. They know who they were, and they pity them. It goes the other way around too. Join me, Rebecca, and you can spend your eternity with your father."

I pause at that. Logic tells me, "No! It's a monster! You can save yourself and hold your father in memory!" But my Heart was saying, "You can't abandon your father here! It's better to stay with him."

He takes a step forward into a room with nothing but pitch black. He shines a lighter around in an attempt to see his surroundings better, but it does very little. As he walks about, I grin in glee. Silently, I creep closer. He mustn't see me, the eyes are bright and scary. The light is blinding to me, making it hard to approach. Fortunately, at that moment, it runs out of fuel and clicks out. I hover near his head, directly behind him. I whisper into his ear.

A screech, a bite, then back into the shadows. His blood runs through my teeth and into my body, feeding me in a way I needed for a long time. More of it was surely scattered on the floor. Yet still, he presses on, clutching his face in agony as he limps away…