The room was alive in ways that defied reality. The walls stretched and warped, turning the once-grand library into an unsettling nightmare. The bookcases that lined the walls swayed as if they were breathing, their shelves pulsating like hearts in a macabre rhythm. Black, viscous liquid dripped from the spines of the books, splattering onto the warped floor with the occasional congealed lump of something foul and rotten. The air was thick with the sounds of ecstasy—moans and giggles that pierced the friends’ ears, making it impossible to think clearly.
Blake knelt on the floor, his bare feet bleeding onto the wood beneath him, his shoes gone. His sobs filled the eerie space, hands trembling as he clutched his sides. Before him was a massive row of books, each spine marked with a single letter of the alphabet. The letters glowed faintly in the room’s twisted light, mocking him with their presence.
Behind him, Jillian and Rebecca argued. Their voices cut through the madness of the room, sharp and filled with tension.
“Just admit it, Blake!” Jillian’s voice trembled with frustration, her hands balled into fists. “We need the letter. It has to be part of her name. We can get out if you just tell us who she was!”
Blake didn’t respond, his face buried in his hands. The crying had turned into gasps, choking on guilt or maybe pain—he didn’t know anymore. The room made it hard to think, let alone speak.
“Jillian, stop!” Rebecca snapped, her voice softer but no less firm. She placed a hand on Jillian’s shoulder, trying to calm her. “He’s been through enough. He almost died protecting us from… from whatever that thing was.”
“That doesn’t change anything!” Jillian turned to face Rebecca, her eyes wide with desperation. “If we don’t find the right letter, we’re stuck here! You saw what happened last time… the walls, the voices. We can’t let it get worse.”
Blake’s sobs grew louder, echoing in the distorted room. The shelves seemed to lean in closer, as if the books themselves were watching, waiting for a confession.
“I can’t…” Blake whispered through his tears, his voice cracking under the weight of whatever guilt he carried.
Jillian took a step forward, her patience thinning. “Blake, please. Just say the name. We’re wasting time!”
“Stop.” Rebecca’s voice was sharp now, firm. She took a breath, the words sticking in her throat before she forced them out. “This wasn’t Blake’s fault.” She glanced at Blake, her own eyes filling with tears as she knelt beside him. “It was me.”
Blake’s head shot up, his eyes wide, his tear-streaked face filled with a sudden urgency. “Rebecca, no. Don’t—don’t say anything.”
But Rebecca wasn’t listening. She stared at Jillian, her lips quivering as she pressed forward, determined. “I’m the one who messed up,” she continued, her voice breaking. “Blake… Blake was just covering for me. I was young. I didn’t want to ruin my life. I went too far, and… she died. It was me.”
“Stop,” Blake whispered again, his hands reaching for her, desperate to silence the words pouring from her. “Rebecca, you don’t have to do this. Just—just let it go. We can find another way.”
Rebecca shook her head, her eyes welling with tears. “No, Blake. They need to know. Jillian needs to know.”
Jillian’s face twisted in confusion, the weight of Rebecca’s words slowly sinking in. “What are you talking about?”
Rebecca took a shaky breath, her voice barely above a whisper as she continued. “I fucked up. It didn’t stop there, though. I couldn’t stop myself. It was like a spiral… one bad decision after another. I thought I could control it, keep it hidden, but it escalated.” Her voice broke completely, her shoulders trembling as she wrapped her arms around herself. “I got involved with people I shouldn’t have… dangerous people. It wasn’t just some fling, Jillian—it was bigger. They made me do things. Horrible things.” Her words came faster now, as if the confession had been clawing its way out for years. “I didn’t mean for it to go so far. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt, but it… it spiraled out of control, and she… she got caught in the middle of it. She was innocent. She didn’t deserve to die.”
Her knees buckled, and she collapsed beside Blake, sobbing uncontrollably. “I didn’t want to go to prison,” she gasped between sobs, “or ruin my life over a mistake. I thought I could fix it, but she’s gone, and I can’t—”
Blake pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly, as her body shook with uncontrollable grief. “It’s okay,” he whispered, though his own tears streamed down his face. “I’ve got you. We’ll figure this out.”
The room seemed to shift with their shared sorrow, the pulsing walls slowing, the dripping black liquid thickening into an almost stillness. The air hung heavy with the weight of Rebecca’s confession, a suffocating silence following her broken words.
Jillian stepped back, her heart pounding in her chest as the truth settled over her like a heavy fog. Her hands went limp at her sides, eyes wide and hollow. “You… you killed her?”
Rebecca nodded against Blake’s chest, unable to speak anymore, her sobs the only sound that filled the warped space.
The bookshelves loomed above them, their letters still glowing faintly, waiting for someone to make a choice. But the room was quiet now, as if satisfied with the truth it had coaxed out.
For a brief moment, there was silence.
The silence was thick, oppressive, almost suffocating, as Rebecca’s sobs quieted into hiccups, her face buried against Blake’s chest. The room, though still warped and grotesque, seemed to hold its breath, as if absorbing the weight of the confession that had been pulled from her soul.
And then, like the sharp crack of a bone breaking, the silence shattered.
Jillian screamed.
Blake and Rebecca both jerked their heads up, eyes wide in shock as Jillian pointed frantically to the ceiling above them. Her mouth hung open, her face pale with terror.
“What—what is it?” Blake stammered, his voice shaking as he struggled to pull himself and Rebecca to their feet. But Jillian couldn’t answer, her finger still trembling as she pointed toward the sky.
Above them, the ceiling groaned, twisting and warping just like the walls, but now it was being torn apart—ripped open by something monstrous. Giant, gnarled hands with claws the size of swords punched through the ceiling, each tearing chunks of the warped library away as if it were paper. The fingers were too long, unnaturally thin and bent at odd angles, the claws jagged and dripping with black ichor. More hands followed, clawing and thrashing at the space above, each one larger than the last.
Through the jagged gaps in the ceiling, a blood-red sky bled into view, swirling with black clouds that churned like an angry ocean. Lightning crackled somewhere far off, but the sky itself was unnatural, a deep crimson hue that seemed to pulse with some malevolent energy. The clouds twisted and writhed as if alive, and from them, the rain began to fall.
Not rain. Something worse.
Baseball-sized clumps of flesh and veins plummeted from the black clouds, smacking wetly against the ground around the friends. The clumps squelched on impact, splattering sickly pinkish fluids as they hit. For a heartbeat, they sat motionless, mere lumps of grotesque meat.
Then they began to move.
Each clump sprouted thin, spidery legs—bone-white and covered in patches of glistening skin. The limbs twitched and jerked unnaturally as the clumps began to scuttle, skittering across the warped floor with terrifying speed, their legs clicking and tapping like insects. They swarmed, their small, fleshy bodies pulsating as they scurried towards the group, driven by some unseen hunger.
“Oh god, oh god, no!” Jillian screamed, backing up toward the warped bookcases. “What the hell are those things?!”
Blake stumbled to his feet, pulling Rebecca up with him, his eyes wide with disbelief. “We need to move!” he yelled, his voice barely cutting through the rising cacophony of clicking legs and tearing claws. He grabbed Rebecca by the arm, his heart pounding so hard he thought it might burst from his chest.
Rebecca, still dazed and sobbing, stumbled forward but kept pace, her mind shattered from the confession, the room, and now this nightmarish attack. “What—what do we do?”
Jillian looked around frantically for an exit, but there was none. The walls, once stretching in abstract ways, were now closing in, the pulsating shelves swaying menacingly as if they too were part of the nightmare. The ceiling was a gaping maw of red, the hands still clawing and tearing at the room from above. The clumps of flesh were everywhere now, hundreds of them, all scurrying in a twisted frenzy, their spider-like legs skittering closer, some even leaping in jagged hops toward the group.
“Run!” Blake shouted, but there was nowhere to run. The pathway ahead of them was blocked by a writhing mass of the fleshy creatures, and the bookcases behind them pulsed and shifted, trapping them in.
Jillian, her breath coming in short, panicked gasps, picked up a heavy book from one of the shelves and hurled it at the nearest clump. It struck the creature with a sickening splat, sending it rolling, but the creature immediately righted itself and charged forward, its legs moving faster now, more aggressively.
“They won’t stop!” Jillian shrieked, her back pressed against the undulating shelves, her face pale with terror.
Blake’s mind raced, his body trembling as he pulled Rebecca behind him. “We have to fight our way through! We—”
Before he could finish, a massive claw slammed down through the ceiling, landing just feet from where they stood. The floor cracked beneath the impact, sending shards of wood flying in all directions. The clawed hand twitched and flexed, its long fingers writhing as if searching for something—searching for them.
Rebecca screamed, pulling away from Blake. “We can’t—there’s no way out!”
Blake looked up at the grotesque ceiling, then back down at the swarm of creatures closing in. His chest heaved with the effort of trying to think, trying to find a way to survive this impossible nightmare.
And all the while, the hands kept tearing at the sky, the rain of flesh continued to fall, and the twisted moans of ecstasy filled the air once again, as if the room itself was laughing at their fear.
Jillian’s scream cut through the chaos, her voice raw and filled with desperation. “What was her name?! Blake, Rebecca, tell me! What was her name?!”
The books with glowing letters on the shelves flickered brighter now, like a heartbeat pounding in rhythm with the rising terror in the room. The walls twisted tighter, the claws above tearing gaping holes in the ceiling, and the rain of flesh continued to fall in gruesome torrents. The spider-like creatures crawled closer, their clicking legs filling the space with an unsettling, rhythmic noise.
Blake’s face contorted with shame, his head hanging low. He glanced at Rebecca, his eyes full of sorrow. He couldn’t protect her from this any longer.
Rebecca shook her head as her lips quivered, but she knew there was no more hiding from the truth. With a broken sob, she yelled out, her voice shattering like glass. “Samantha! It was Sam! She was innocent—an innocent victim and she didn’t deserve any of it! Nothing that happened to her should’ve happened!”
The weight of the name seemed to hang in the air, heavier than the oppressive atmosphere surrounding them. Rebecca’s knees buckled beneath her as she collapsed to the ground, her body wracked with uncontrollable sobs. Tears streamed down her face, her cries raw and unhinged, drowning out the horrors unfolding around them.
But the room showed no mercy.
The moment she hit the ground, the spider-like creatures swarmed. Their spindly legs clicked faster, their twitching bodies driven into a frenzy. They leaped onto her with terrifying speed, their claws and mandibles tearing into her skin. Rebecca’s cries of guilt and sorrow quickly morphed into screams of agony as the creatures bit and clawed at her, ripping through her flesh with a nightmarish ferocity. Her blood splattered across the floor, the dark liquid mixing with the viscous black slime that dripped from the shelves.
“Rebecca!” Blake screamed, trying to pull her back, but there were too many of the creatures, their bodies piling on top of her in a writhing, seething mass.
Jillian didn’t hesitate. As Rebecca’s screams grew more ragged, more desperate, Jillian scanned the shelves, her eyes locking onto the one book marked with an “S.” It flickered ominously, the glow almost painful to look at, but she didn’t care. She reached for it, her hands trembling as she yanked the book from the shelf.
The moment the book left its place, the creatures hesitated, if only for a fraction of a second. It was enough time for Jillian to tear the cover open, flipping through the pages with frantic speed.
The book was filled with sketches, each page depicting a young woman, her face slowly becoming clearer as Jillian turned each page. Samantha. Her face was innocent, almost kind, in the earlier drawings, but as the pages progressed, the woman’s expression turned darker. Bruises bloomed across her cheeks, cuts and gashes opened on her skin. The violence increased with each page—her body growing more mangled, more broken. It was horrifying to look at, but Jillian couldn’t stop.
She had to know.
By the time she reached the final page, the image of Samantha was unrecognizable. She was lying still, her body twisted in an unnatural position, her once-bright eyes dull and lifeless. Blood pooled around her, soaking into the page.
Jillian’s heart stopped as she saw the sentence scratched into the bottom of the page—written in what could only be blood, smeared and jagged as if carved in a desperate, final act:
“To save the innocent, one must face the truth they hide the most.”
The words seemed to pulse on the page, the blood almost wet to the touch. Jillian’s mind reeled, trying to make sense of it. A clue? A warning? Or something else entirely?
She looked back at Blake, who was frozen in place, his face pale, his mouth slightly open in disbelief. Rebecca’s body was still being swarmed by the creatures, but her screams had grown weaker, her voice hoarse and broken. Jillian’s stomach twisted at the sight, but she forced herself to focus.
“We have to face it, Blake!” she screamed over the noise, holding up the book. “The truth! It’s the only way!”
Blake shook his head, his body trembling as he backed away from Rebecca’s broken form. “I can’t. I can’t—”
“You have to!” Jillian snapped, her eyes wild with fear and urgency. “Or we’re all dead!”
The sky above them continued to bleed red, and chunks of flesh rained down, splattering onto the floor. But it wasn’t just flesh anymore—now the lumps began to take shape, twisting into grotesque imitations of human bodies that crawled and writhed as they hit the ground.
Jillian flipped through the book again, searching for something, anything, that would help them escape the hellish nightmare. But all she saw was Samantha, over and over, her lifeless eyes staring back at her.
Blake dropped to his knees, his hands covering his face. He couldn’t speak, the guilt too heavy to bear. He had known the truth all along. He had been part of it, even if he hadn’t wanted to be.
Jillian’s voice cracked with desperation. “We’re running out of time. Face it, Blake! Face what you’ve been hiding!”
But the spider-like creatures were already closing in again, their legs clicking faster, their bodies ready to tear apart whatever was left.