Discovering Ashes 14

I reached for the radio on my shoulder. It was probably best if I let everyone else know just what I saw, instead of blundering further inside by myself; besides, I didn’t have a hammer to tear down the wall. Pressing the side of the radio, the familiar cracking sound of the button and the speaker were a bit comforting.

“Hey, uh… Dex? I need some help down here,” I whispered before releasing the button. It was silent for a moment.

And then another.

And then another.

My heart kicked it into high gear as thoughts of why no one was answering me flooded my mind. Breathing suddenly became a chore as my body started shivering and shuddering from the cold and from something else entirely. The air, while oppressive before, was thicker and more menacing, like it was trying to choke me. The memories of the stories came back in a flash, and I found myself hearing sounds and smelling things I hadn’t heard or smelled when I’d first entered the dank, decrepit basement. Normally I would chalk these things up to just my adrenalin making me a bit more sensitive to my surroundings or some bullshit like that most people found out through the Discovery Channel.

But not now. Not this. I’d had adrenalin pumping through my veins the moment I stepped from the stairs, so to only just now smell and hear the sounds and odors told me one thing.

I wasn’t alone.

Turning on my heel, the flashlight shined brightly into the darkness all around me, shaking and bobbing with my hand’s own dance of fright and paranoia. I couldn’t see anything new or remotely odd - relatively speaking - around me, but I could still hear the sound! It sounded close, closer than I would’ve liked! It was oddly familiar, but in this wasteland it was entirely alien to me.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhpt

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhpt

The sound started to get shorter and louder, and I found myself looking everywhere at once while keeping my feet planted firmly on the ground beneath me. Crumbling noises started to follow each moment of the sound, and I started to get a picture in my head of just what the hell it was I was hearing. In my mind, I saw metal, and really the high tone of the noise would probably back me up.

Wait….

Turning round back to the small hole, I caught a glimpse of A hand before a sharp pain went through the back of my skull and everything went black.





This makes 25 pages in Word Processor the story's gone on for. Not my longest work, but certainly the one with the most happening and development in such a short timescale!