She could not feel any worse. She clenched her fist, the sight of the stormy sky only making her feel angrier. It was a horrible day, both figuratively and literally. Her father called, and grounded her. The school had called him during work for her missed attendance, giving away her escapade. And the clouds above seemed to threaten to pour cold water over her soon.
She would have kept mellowing if a voice had not pulled her out of it.

“Bidane.” Her name was said roughly, with a scolding tone. “Are you even listening?”

She was not, at all. Yet she feigned having done so all this time, with a slight prideful blush.

“Of course I was!”

Her friends glared at her, most deadpan. They leaned onto the small table to question her, having to raise their voices to be heard in the crowded plaza.

“Sure. Now, because you totally were, where did we say we could go?”

“Umm…”

“Gotcha.” Lissa let herself lean back with a huff, proclaiming her guilt. “If you had been paying attention instead of thinking of your crushes, you would know we said to go bowling.”

“Bowling, really?” Bidane did not enjoy the idea, and she was fast to show it to her three friends. “We would have to drive there, it is one hour of commute out of town. With this weather, I’m not really in the mood.”

“What else do you want to do? Go to the market or parks under the rain? We need your car, come on. We can’t just spend Friday at home!” Anna’s expression turned sly, with a mischievous smirk. “Admit it, you just don’t want to go because you’re grounded, not because of these little clouds.”

They were certainly not little. Above them, what had been a beautiful blue sky had turned into a foreboding amalgamation of grey and black hues. Somehow, she could swear that the sight was making her bandaged cut sting even more.

“We’re bored.” Adam finally spoke up, all ever the silent but blunt one. “If we stay like that, it will be your fault. Only you can solve it. Well, indirectly. You know what I mean.”

She snarled, seeing him wink and smirk, compelling her to give up.

“Shut up, Adam.” No matter her mellowing, she surrendered, deciding that leaving their small town would be the best way to cheer up. “Fine, I’ll ask my bro for the car. But you owe me.”

The other three grinned, glad to have a plan for the afternoon. But there would be no afternoon to enjoy, only a cold dark night. As they stood, they finally realized that the plaza had gone quiet. A few steps away from the tables of the bar, it was all it took for them to finally feel the freezing breeze. Building up, it was managing to make the people around uncomfortable. From summer to winter, no one was wearing clothes suitable for the temperature that engulfed them.

“What the-?”

Everyone froze. A sound echoed far away, but clear enough for all to hear. No one wanted to admit what it was, however.
Dissonant, the townspeople standing in the plaza just glanced around, still wanting to believe it was a normal day, an uneventful routine. But there was nothing normal in the faint screams that echoed to them, far away in the streets.
Some groups near them began to pace and pretend nothing was wrong, others laughed with the idea that some party might be happening. A few couples decided to go home to fetch a jacket or two. They, on the other hand, chose to stay where they stood.

“Guys, I’m not imagining things, right?” Adam looked at them with an eyebrow raised, fidgeting, not only because of the cold. “Those are no happy hollers…”

“It sounds right out of a movie.”

“A bad one.” Lyssa tried to make light of it, waving off their concerns. “There must be a football game or something at the park, right Bidane?”

Lyssa leaned and asked again, seeing that Bidane was staring at the distance blankly.

“Bidane? Are you-”

Soon enough, Anna saw as well what Bidane was looking at. Her eyes widened in fear; she lifted a shaky hand to point to the distance. Adam and Lyssa turned, just in time to see for themselves.
The screams were closer now, too close. Before, they were idle, but now they had frozen. For they saw something that finally shattered their all too human reassurance of normality.

Clawing, whimpering, panicking, two men tried desperately to pull themselves off… off of something. Something elastic and slimy, which had tangled itself around their legs and was currently pulling them out of the plaza into an adjacent street.

Whatever laid past the corner, they could not see, but by the horrified yells that came from the crowd, it was something worthy of fear.

One second they were debating, now they found themselves in the way of a fleeing rush of people, which would not doubt to push, crush and step over anything to save their skin.
For skin was what those two men lacked now, down to their feet. The small glimpse they managed to catch before they got shoved was of bone and flesh, before the thing pulled them all the way out of sight. If they had been able to keep staring, they would have seen blood paint the pavement, in between the clawing marks of their hands.

The friends blacked out, each of them trampled by the fleeing rush. No one ever placed morality over self-preservation…

—————-

 

A stomp. Heavy, direct and potent. Another. Multiple ones, each louder. Closer.

“Bid! Bidane!” A shake. Two, a soft hit. “Get up! Now!”

She finally opened one eye, vision blurry. Adam’s voice was urgent, desperate. He was shaking her body, crouching over her, his eyes wide in fear.

“Ad-”

No time for his name; if she had spoken it, the sound would have been muffled. Another heavy thud reached her ears, so close that she could feel the tremor on the floor.
Bidane had no other choice but to stand up with a jolt.

Her instincts of survival overcame her, not leaving much room for another reaction. She could not even scream, because what she was seeing was far too unnatural, too unfamiliar and uncanny to process.

Whatever she was seeing seemed to moan and gurgle, while dragging itself across the plaza. It had pulled itself out of the nearby streets, chasing after the crowd. Slowly yet consistently, its mossy looking body approached them. Its huge front limbs raised and slammed forward, compensating for the lack of lower ones. Its strength had to be massive for it to sustain its size, its huge bulging torso. It convulsed constantly, apparently composed of moss, flesh and… things she could never discern.

Overall, if she did not move soon, she would end up in its grasp. And she had seen what that moss had done to those two unlucky men.

And if those huge hands did not get her… that enormous maw would. A gaping hole where the thing’s face should be, which was fully rowed with tiny root-like teeth. An endless abyss of green and black, sinking into a convulsing void…

Adam did not have to tell her to run, fight or flight kicked in. Both bolted off, each grabbing one of their friends. While she pulled a stumbling and waking Lyssa by her arm, he snatched an unconscious Anna into his hold.
The thing did not react much to their fleeing, yet kept moving endlessly in their direction, ravenous.

Only one looked back while they ran for their lives. Bidane stared intently on that gaping abyss that wanted to consume them. Her whole body would have fit in it, in one single gulp. Maybe even two people at once. It was uncanny, resembling enough a human mouth yet too uneven, oversized.

She could not see the bottom of that hungry black pit, its mossy walls endless. She almost… wanted to go back and dive in it.

No. Whatever was calling her to feed herself and die was not her own mind.
She whipped her head and stopped staring; at the same time, she made Lyssa look away too. She had been entranced for a moment as well.

The friends gained distance and disappeared into the streets of their small town, refusing to look back as the monster let out a sad hungry loud wail in the plaza.

——————–

Her town had always been quiet, out of the ordinary. She could not recognize it anymore.
What had always been empty streets, only occasionally roamed by neighbours, now were a labyrinth of uncertainty. Citizens would run through hurriedly, some north, others south, yelling their inquisitions towards the chaos.

No one really knew where to head to, not when some would find a grisly fate in some dark street nearby, causing others to change their course immediately.

Black fog had descended over the town from the clouds above. If a street was not covered in it, it would still be dark, thanks to the sudden amalgamation of vegetation that crawled over the buildings. Like veins, they grew slowly over the places they had called home, giving them a neglected look.

Bidane growled, yanking on a root that had grown between two houses. She opened the way into an alley by stomping on the black branches, deciding that they would not let themselves be caught by whatever roamed in the other streets.

“Come on, before more people come, and we get trampled again.”

Certainly, the townspeople were behaving like a pack. However, judging by the screams and multiple turnbacks that contained fewer numbers, those ventures were too dangerous to trust.

Adam was the first to dash through the broken roots. In his rush, he hit Lyssa’s shoulder, too slow to move away from his path. She would have yelled at him, if not for them hearing something troublesome.

Rumbling steps, once more. It was slowly, but surely, following them.

Anna and Lyssa began to step backwards towards the roots as well, keeping their sight on their back. Bidane hushed them past, flinching when another loud wail reached them. Then, the screams of the people who had been running near, just a corner away.

She had to mentally block the sound of ripping flesh and melting skin as she pushed through the last. The look on her friend’s faces told her enough, all could hear it. The steps did not stop when the screams faded.

As they came closer, she pointed frantically to an open door in the small street. A small home; the alternative was to run for it, with the thing cutting space at an alarming rate. Too close for them to risk being sighted by it, too dangerous to gamble that others doors ahead would be open too.

So they kicked the door in and jumped into the small vacant living room… just in time for a bulging mass of moss to seep through the roots around the corner. Bidane threw herself against the door and shut it, but it did not stop the huge mass from brushing against it.

The now dark room did not hide the fact that they were still in dire danger. Even if now closed in, all gasped when some slime seeped through the gaps on the wooden door, oozing and convulsing.

“Fuck!”

Her pained hiss was almost silent. Still, even if she had reason to scream in pain for being touched by the ooze, Adam pulled at her and covered her mouth tightly. Both cowered slowly away from the door, praying that its shakiness did not indicate it would crumble under the weight of the monster’s movements outside.

Anna had hidden behind a table; her eyes were now fixed on the ooze that had passed through the door’s gaps. Luckily, it did not seem to be oozing anymore, but settling on the ground. It seemed to feed for a moment on what little harm it had done on Bidane’s shoulder, and then, it died, like dried grass.

Lyssa kept a finger on her lips, all crouched in the dark. After a few minutes, the door stopped bending and shaking, the steps a little away. Then, faint echoes of the thing’s steps, lasting more dreading minutes that seemed hours.

It was only when the wails seemed distant and the screams low that they stood and breathed louder. The emptiness of the small home only made their discomfort all the more apparent. Alone, cornered, clueless.
Still, that did not mean they were helpless.

“Bidane, are you ok?”

Anna rushed to her, finally leaving her hiding spot. Adam stopped holding a hand over Bidane’s mouth, nearing the door nonchalantly. She gave him a look for his detachedness, acknowledging Lyssa’s and Anna’s concerns next.

“It’s fine, I’m fine.” She said that with confidence, until Lyssa tried to touch the red bruise she had been trying to brush off. “Oww!”

A small slap on her hand. Lyssa backed off, managing a small apology under Bidane’s grumpy glare.

“Sorry.” She still stared at the bruise like it was the strangest thing she had seen, fearing it would worsen at any moment. Her jacket was torn, melted, revealing the redness of her skin.“It looks like a burn.”

“Because it is.”

All turned to look at Adam. The girls shivered at seeing he had opened the door. He was now looking at its outer side, his expression curious and venturing.

“What touched you was detached from the thing. Meanwhile… its body did a number on this wooden door. It was not trying to open the door, it didn’t spot us; it’s just fat.”

“What the actual fuck is going on.” Anna stared at the now rotten door. It was simultaneously burned, melted and rotten, somehow. From a blank stare to a horrified grimace; her body began to tremble. “What the fuck is that thing? Where the fuck it came from?! Where do we go now?! Why is this-?!”

“Breathe.” Bidane stopped Anna’s increasingly panicked screaming, concerned for her… and the thing’s possible attention. “We don’t know. But we have to figure it out and get our asses out of here. You’re right, Anna.”

Her friend appreciated her gentle grasp on her hands. With a gulp, she let Bidane think; meanwhile, Adam chastised them.

“Stop yelling, will you? I don’t want to have to hide again in someone’s house.”

“And you stop being a douche.” Lyssa called him out, not one to stay silent.“Nice move opening the door when that thing could be out.”

“Someone had to do it. That thing moved on, and you three are too busy cowering to see we need to move. Why should I-”

“Enough.” Bidane spoke up, moving forward while leading a meek Anna by the hand, never pulling harshly. She was gentle with her, even if her tone was all but pissed. “You both are right. You are an ass, Adam. But he has a point, Lyssa. So let just go and keep it down.”

Lyssa would have taken the chance of a talk-off any other day. Not today. All moved silently and followed her forward. All could still hear the wails in the distance. There were no screams they could hear, no apparent victims of its gluttonous stride.
For now.