Talon stood in the middle of Kane's dorm room. The lights had just shut off, and he felt something breathing down his neck—the breath warm, hot even, making his skin prickle where it touched him. Yet Talon's expression remained blank. Kane stared ahead, his sword gleaming despite the darkness.
"There's something behind you," Kane said, his black eyes scanning the room.
Talon turned slowly, but nothing greeted him. No being, no entity, not even a shadow. Just emptiness.
"But there's nothing," Talon thought, confusion creeping in. "I don't understand. I felt breath on my neck. If I turned around, something should be standing over me. Yet there's nothing."
Kane looked around. A laugh echoed through the room, and a figure materialized behind him. The entity wasn't particularly large, but it was tall, lanky, and terrifying.
That's when they both felt it—wet flesh beneath their feet. The space had transformed from a room into something much larger, something alive. The flesh beneath them pulsed and shifted.
"What is this? What's happening?" Kane demanded, though his face showed no fear, only that same emotionless mask as he surveyed the area.
The darkness pressed in, suffocating. Then they saw it: a creature—no, an abomination—stood before them. Limbs jutted from places where they shouldn't exist. Eyes and mouths gaped from impossible angles. It looked like an amalgamation of body parts, rotting flesh, and living nightmare.
The being spotted them and slowly dragged its malformed body forward.
Neither of them ran. Kane drew his sword and slashed at the entity. In a blink, it vanished, then reappeared exactly where it had stood—but closer, far closer.
The creature rushed toward them at an extraordinary pace.
By instinct, Kane ran. Talon stood frozen—after all, his body had no instinct, no ability to react unless he willed it. Then he chose to run as well.
They both sprinted across what felt like miles of dead flesh, stumbling over body parts and organs. They ran until they crashed into something solid—a boulder.
Behind it lay a human corpse. The body looked intact but severely dehydrated, clearly dead for months, perhaps years. Beside it, they found a note—a large piece of paper still clutched in the corpse's hand, a pen in the other.
The monster flew past them with blinding speed.
"Give me that!" Kane snatched at the letter, but Talon grabbed it first.
"I found it," Talon said coldly.
"You found nothing. Hand it over before that thing comes back!"
They both gripped the paper, their eyes locked in challenge even as the creature's footsteps echoed closer. Finally, they read it together, and what they discovered was terrifying—too terrifying for anyone to experience and survive.
When I entered the cave, the sight that greeted me was terrible—so horrifying that it haunted me for days afterward, assuming I even survived that long in this godforsaken place. Bodies lay everywhere. In fact, the corpses might as well have become the floor itself at this point. There was no discernible edge where the cracks in the actual stone ended and the human remains began.
The cave was black—pitch black. I fumbled for my flashlight and tried to activate it, but whenever I did, the beam was swallowed whole by the oppressive darkness surrounding me. My hands trembled as I clicked the switch on and off, desperate for even a sliver of light to guide my way.
I continued forward, my boots squelching against the bodies beneath me. For at least an hour I walked, each step filling me with mounting dread. My mind raced with a single question: would I ever escape this hellish landscape? The stench of decay filled my nostrils, and I fought back waves of nausea that threatened to overwhelm me.
Then something breathed on my neck.
Every hair on my body stood up. A primal instinct screamed at me not to turn around, as if something beyond my understanding compelled me to keep facing forward. My heart hammered against my ribs so hard I thought it might burst through my chest.
Another breath touched my neck, warm and fetid.
By then I was frozen in shock, my muscles locked in place. I didn't know what to do. Every fiber of my being told me to run, but my legs refused to obey. Slowly, against every screaming instinct, I turned around.
I saw it. Oh God, I saw the creature.
It was a terrifying abomination that looked like multiple human bodies contorted and fused together in impossible ways. The beast was vaguely humanoid, but it appeared as though dozens of corpses had been melted and reformed into this nightmarish shape. Eyes stared out from where eyes should never be. Ears protruded from unnatural angles. Limbs jutted out at grotesque positions, twitching with unnatural life.
I was frozen. I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything but stare at this monument to suffering.
Then everything went black—blacker than it already was in this cursed cave. The darkness was absolute, suffocating. I could hear the monster beginning to shuffle toward me, its many limbs scraping against the stone and flesh beneath it. I couldn't see it because everything had become pitch black, but I could feel its presence drawing closer.
So I ran.
I ran for my life, my lungs burning, tears streaming down my face. I banged desperately on the cave walls, searching frantically for an exit, praying for any way out of this nightmare. My knuckles split and bled, but I barely felt the pain.
But the beast was fast—impossibly fast—and it was right behind me. I could hear its ragged breathing, could feel the displacement of air as its twisted limbs reached for me.
I kept running until my legs couldn't carry me anymore, until my muscles screamed in agony and my vision blurred with exhaustion.
I'm currently hiding behind a boulder, my whole body shaking, hoping against hope that this monster won't find me. Every sound makes me flinch. Every shadow seems to move.
I'm writing this note to you as a warning: if you ever encounter the Slaughter Cave, I pray to whatever god you believe in that you make it out alive. Because I know, with terrible certainty, that I won't.