Death is Certain. Staying Alive is Optional.
Run.
The pace quickened. They could hear them close by, rustling the leaves as they scurried through the forest.
Run!
Their feet ached. Their legs shivered. Every fiber in their bones bent and twisted, crushing every ounce of strength they had. But they could not rest. Not now.
RUN!
The snarls and screeches grew louder, intensifying as they ran through darkness, twigs and branches snapping at every corner. Their wispy breaths cried for more air. Fear, Desperation, Despair, Terror. A cry for help. A cry for hope. A cry for a miracle. Anything to save them from the Abyss.
“Come on!” Elliot shouted, pulling his little sister every step of the way.
Through the blind darkness, they ran. Wildly and without direction, they ran. They ran as far as their bodies could take them. But they had been running for far too long.
“I can’t...” Emily cried, wheezing and coughing exasperatedly as she struggled to contain the tears pouring from her eyes. Her small, little chest burned. She cried and wailed as her big brother tugged at her to keep moving, to keep pushing forward. But she could go no further. She cried, not because she could not bear the pain, but because she was a burden to her brother. She could do no more.
“I’m sorry...” she said, whimpering as her legs gave in before collapsing on the forest floor. “I’m sorry...”
“Don’t give up now! We’ll get out of here, I promise!” Elliot tugged on Emily as their screams grew closer. The scent of rotting flesh and putrid bile permeated the air. They were close.
“Please, Emily! Get up!” he begged, lowering his face to hers.
“I can’t...” she coughed. “Just leave me...”
Elliot stood back up. “No. I’m not leaving you.”
“You don’t even care for me...”
“I do now.”
Elliot turned his back toward her and bent down. He pulled her thin arms over his shoulders and lifted her up. His muscles strained as he struggled to pick Emily up, exhausted as he was. Yet through the pain tearing at his veins, he stood back up and began running straight through the pitch-black veil.
Faster, faster, faster. Don’t stop. That was all that ran through Elliot’s mind. The screams grew louder, and the snarling more terrifying. He could feel them trailing behind. A few steps? Ten? Twenty? He could not tell. But they were right behind him, and he was terrified to stop.
“Why are you doing this for me...?” Emily muttered, her soft voice barely breaking through her rasp throat.
“You’re my family,” he replied, weaving left and right past the trees, hopping through fallen logs and dips in the ground, trying not to trip. “Even if I hate you, I’ll never let anything happen to you.”
“Ell...” Emily uttered, tears streaming down her face.
Then he felt it. The cool breeze flowing across his face. The air had been stale for all that time, but not now. They were close.
“We’re almost there, Emily!” Elliot shouted. “Just hang on-”
His heart sank as he suddenly lost the ground underneath his feet. His eyes grew wide as the weightless air rushed below them, and the two children screamed as they came tumbling down the drop into dirt and stone, each impact pounding their flimsy bones, tearing away at their soft skin. They rolled downhill, narrowly missing the massive trunks as they finally came to a stop at the flat bottom.
The dust settled. Elliot coughed and spat as he whinced his eyes, now bloodied by the open wound on his forehead, struggling to pick himself up. He had scrapes and bruises all over his legs and arms. Each one felt like a candle flame burning through his skin, gnawing away at his bloodied flesh. He looked around as best he could for Emily. He could hear her faint breathing just ahead and reached out, trying to grab hold of her, only to find more dirt.
“Emily...” he muttered through his gasping voice.
Elliot worked his arms forward and began pushing himself off the ground, forcing his stiff joints to move. He had ran for all this time, the adrenaline numbing his pain to the point that he was unstoppable, forgetting that he was only a child. Now that he had stopped, Elliot could no longer ignore the painless agony that flooded his entire being. He cried out in horror as he found himself unable to muster the strength to stand up.
The deafening shrieks and howls of shadows grew closer, echoing in the distance. They snarled and groaned, their mismatched footsteps stampeding away until there was an abrupt stop. Then the rocks came rolling down.
“Emily...!” Elliot cried in desperation.
He could hear them coming. His stammering heart bludgeoned his chest, desperately clawing its way out. His eyes darted all around him, not knowing when or where they were coming. Only the faint sound of ghastly grunts and snarls could be made out. Elliot reached out, pulling his way forward with little strength he had left, feeling his way across the dirt, until he felt the warmth of her body. He grabbed a hold of her and shook.
“Emily... Emily!”
She groaned, but she did not move.
“Get up Emily!”
He shook harder. She winced and squirmed, but she did not get up. Elliot shook harder, calling out her name, begging her to move.
“Get up Emily! Get up!”
The rocks came crashing down from above, smashing into trees and flattening bushes as putrid carcasses of flesh and bone slammed into the dirt nearby. His heart raced. He could feel their eyes turning toward him. The crackling of joints and muscles twisting. The lowly grunts and snorts. The rancid odor was enough to make Elliot nauseous. Sweat riding down his dusted face, Elliot clawed around for anything he could use as a weapon. He palmed the soft soil until he took hold of a thick piece of branch. He could hear them moving. Their growls turned into hisses and snarls, their steps hastened and dragged violently across the screeching ground.
“Get up!” he said.
But it wasn’t to Emily. Now it was for himself.
“GET UP!”
In a defiant roar, Elliot picked himself up with all he had left inside, his blood surging in an indistinguishable mix of fear and anxiety. He could barely feel his own skin crawling between his bubbling muscles, but with one swift motion he struck the first thing that came shrieking toward him in the dark.
A crack.
Emily choked from the air’s foul stench. She gasped for breath, and awoke to a faint round object before her eyes.
She screamed.
“Emily!?”
Elliot stopped to turn, only for more to come his way. He swung again at the darkness, clobbering whatever the branch could make contact with. The howls gathered, the shrieks sharpened. More came his way, more flooded the space before him. There was not a moment he could spare.
“Elliot!” Emily called out, whisking her eyes around the pitch black.
She could only make out the chaos unfolding around her, the splitting shrieks and shrills of bones cracking and Elliot’s frantic cries as he battered away the darkness.
He turned for a second and screamed.
“RUN!”
Another came, its red-black gaze meeting Elliot’s own, its gnarly jaws oozing with dried blood and vile stench. Its bite nearly found its mark, had he not stepped back and swung with all that he had. The branch cracked and snapped the creature’s head off its neck. But not nearly enough to sever it.
“Come with me!” Emily cried back.
“JUST RUN!” Elliot screamed again.
Elliot picked up a large rock and clubbed another beast in the skull.
“GO!”
The gurgling snarls soon turned their attention toward the young girl. Dread filled her nerves, and her body froze, unable to move. She couldn’t outrun them. She couldn’t lose them. She couldn’t escape. Only the thought of death remained.
“Over here, you filth!” Elliot called out, chucking rocks at the creatures. “Yeah, that’s right! Come here!”
He beat his chest and stomped the ground as much as he could, drawing their attention as much as he could. The monsters stopped and reared their focus back onto him, hissing as they ran straight again toward Elliot.
Emily hesitated. She opened her mouth to call out to her brother. She would call for him to be with her, to stay by her side. But she stopped. Her brother had risked everything to save her. Even now as she stared into the Abyss, Elliot would not give up on her. He called out to the Abyss, urging it to him, so that she would not be swallowed whole. She cried. She sobbed for her brother, for her heart that could take no more, knowing full well what she was about to do:
Run.
She choked down her tears, and as her older brother screamed wildly into the night, coaxing the monsters away, she picked herself up and ran. She ran as far as her short legs would take her, through the dark forest under the veil of night.