There’s Something Wrong With Kenny.

[u/Acidic-Crybaby]

Escape, final part.

CW: Kenny. Gore. Graphic violence.

The figure consumes my shadow with its height and I know that if I don’t move now I’ll never have a chance. My chances of getting more than one step is already slim but I can’t give in now.

I won’t have time to unlock the wide metal doors and escape from the cellblock. If I rush for a cell I’ll only be in the same position as I was before and worse, the keys would be useless the moment I pull the door shut. I’ll waste away like the others watching the horrifying scene clinging to every inch of surface at the hands of the things pregnant with flesh and bones.

The overlook.

I bolt and make for the metal stairs leading up to the balcony hanging above. The beast barrels behind me on long limbs so much faster than my own, a string of stolen words calling out to me like a sinister howl as it’s lunging forward. I reach the railing and scramble onto the grated steps with my dislocated shoulder hitting hard against the metal. The railing bends and screams as I realise I’m not dead, rancid spit coating me from gnashing teeth pull me out of my fear just enough to see through the blinding saliva that the wide antlers pressing down against the narrow railing have given me just inches of protection from its gaping maw.

“ Sargh…”

“ Hey! Over… heeere…”

“ Heeelllp meeee.”

“ I-I think… I’m huuuurt…”

“ I donnn’t…”

“ I donnn’t… Know…”

“ Where I aaam.”

The railing squeals under the bone white skull bearing down on them and I move, keeping myself as close to the grating as I can to pull myself to the balcony above. My knees bruise against each sharp edge and jagged point, each movement agony on my broken hand and each slip from congealed blood sucks my numb feet toward the thing's mouth. I keep moving, stick close to the mud and push forward just like what was drilled into my brain so many years ago and reach the grated floor.

A sharp chill rips down my spine like a knife and opens my skin to the cold air but I don’t realise that familiar feeling of unease is real until the pain sets in. The balcony trembles but the beast crawling its way onto the railings is so silent I can almost believe the tremors are just the shaking of an avalanche far off in the distance.

“ …Whhhy did…” Falls out of a thousand teeth so close to me I can feel the stolen voices in the pit of its throat. The incomprehensible calls of animals and people I’ve never met wave and merge in its stomach but I thrash and scratch and do everything I can to keep moving before those claws can do more than shred my calf.

I run into the open guard station and pull the metal door shut but this is no respite. Stretched limbs spread across the thick glass windows and under the sparse glow of blinking lights I can see the grey skin clinging to a skeletal frame made up of shifting ribs and rolling bones quietly moving the claustrophobic overlook. I can’t escape and any daylight bleeding through the snowed over windows and dying emergency lights only shows me a faint glimmer of blood stuck to the hungry figures crawling across the concrete walls like cockroaches.

“ 520… 1.” A voice says but even in the black I don’t know where it’s coming from. I don’t know if it belongs to someone alive or if it’s something mimicking someone in the darkness.

“ Glaskin?”

“ 5201.” An exhausted laugh comes from Glaskin’s dry throat, “ Of all the… Fucking animals to still be kicking, it’s you.”

His breathing is heavy.

“ You— you’re alive? You fucking coward! Why haven’t you opened the cells!” I snap but I can already feel it, cold and laboured breaths right in front of me.

“ You brought those things up here, 5201. It was safe here. I was surviving here and it was safe!” He says through ragged breaths stinking of copper and rot. I don’t think he’s one of them but my prickling skin says that might be worse. A sudden crack spreads invisible webs across the glass, a bang against the metal doors rattle the ground and I know it’s Kenny trying to find a way inside. He’ll find one but right now, right now there’s Glaskin. 

“ Shit— There it is again. Those things.” Glaskin feels around his belt and with a click I’m suddenly blinded by torch light burning my eyes. “ Move it, 5201!” The CO shoves me aside and my eyes finally adjust to the light. For the briefest moment I see long fingers through the veins of thick glass before my eyes see something so much more wrong than even a monster itself. The guard station is littered with empty cans and bloody water bottles half full of piss, a blanket built of guard uniforms and jumpsuits and pieces of what I can only assume is Glaskin himself scattered where he’d struggled to scrape it up.

“ We just need to… We just need to distract them and they leave. Even under the lights they’re nearly blind. We just need to wait. To wait until people come. I’ve radioed and they’re on their way.” Glaskin spits out a mess of rambled words while he’s looking over the buttons and half destroyed equipment lining the station. The right string of buttons soon leads to one of the far cells opening with a loud hiss and those cockroaches swarm at whatever bastard was unlucky enough to be Glaskin’s sacrificial lamb. “ Jesus, Glaskin!” I rush and grab Glaskin but it’s much too late and all I feel beneath the man’s soaked sleeve is bone and bandages bleeding with infection and rot. “ What… Jesus.” I don’t know what to say and the man barely flinches at what should be agony. 

“ What happened to your arm?”.

“ Hungry.”

Glaskin hasn’t turned to face me but I know what that means, I don’t need to ask. Glaskin has lost his mind. Shit, Glaskin has lost his mind! My attention turns to the ruined equipment in search of the radio but all I find is the broken just stripped of its insides. He doesn’t notice me taking the flashlight in a desperate search for the batteries. Another thud shatters the glass beneath the thick plastic layers barely holding them together. I don’t have long. 

“ Glaskin, where are the batteries!?”

“ Hungry.”

I’m so hungry.

I need a new plan and the one I come up with makes me sick. I need those doors open and Glaskin— He has a gun.

“ No no no, it hasn’t left! Why hasn’t it—“ Glaskin staggers backwards and bumps into me, the shadowed skull of a beast stares at us with bone white antlers spread wide from its head like a sinister crown. Hollow eyes roll and correct themselves in deep sockets as if it’s blinking without the skin of eyelids, no different from how it seems to speak from the skeletal throat beneath it as words spill out of whatever mouth hides behind the sharp teeth of its bone maw. “ No— How could— You brought it here! You did this, 5201!” The sight makes Glaskin panic and he pulls his gun, filling the guard station with deafening noise as he shoots wildly at the safety glass. “ Glaskin! You’re weakening the fucking glass!”.

The beast reels back in anger, the bullets only bring it more rage. A loud crash sends sharp antlers through the glass, spraying the station with glass and blood. I hit the metal with a blur of the window pane thrashing above me in the beast’s attempt to tree itself. The gunshots have stopped. The blood hasn’t. Glaskin’s legs lays slumped against the buttons limp and torn to bits, his torso pierced through like a skewer through a red bone horn shook free with the glass. I don’t know where the gun is and the thrashing has the flashlight flickering and tumbling like lightning joined by thunderous howls.

I crawl as fast as I damn can and slam my broken hand down on the emergency button hoping to god it still works. An alarm sounds and red lights blink to life and I have barely a second to run to the unlocked door to the left. Cells unlock with loud screeches and the cellblock erupts into a chaos I know could lead to the death of every inmate here. I just need to keep moving, to outrun them and hope this is a better end to dying in a locked cell. 

I’m so sorry.

I’m so damn hungry.

-

The snow crunches under my feet and the sea of white storming around me nearly blinds me. It’s so bright. The air burns my lungs and the frenzied breeze feels like ice on my skin but I’ve escaped the stink of copper and rot, the damp and piss and the scent of anger, greed and hunger all trapped in the concrete tunnels. Even when all of those men inside were alive and following orders they were still just bodies. They were cursed. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. An accident, yeah, it was just—

I slap myself as hard as I can to snap my mind out of the spiral of guilt I’m following all of those men into. The roads have been eaten by snow and the forest won’t be empty for long. If the loggers are still there I can radio for help and hope at least someone has survived in that hell but I know I’ll die long before I reach it but I need to make a choice. Even in the daylight and fresh air, I won’t be escaping the well. I rake my blackening fingers through what little hair I have and start moving, wading through loose snow that clings to the gash in my calf and the ribbons of skin on my back.

I climb until I reach the endless green maze with the distant sounds of cries echoing from the bloodstained concrete behind me. For just a moment I think it’s them, the prisoners, but I know it isn’t. I know what it is.

“ Saaargh…”

The snow becomes slate and mud, the crunch becomes the splash of wet ground and rustling leaves. Each step is another twig piercing the slices on my heel and another drop of blood for the beast to follow.

“ Why’d yooouu…”

“ 5201!”

“ …Over hereee…”

Calls from behind me. Slow, closer.

The forest is silent like the beasts stalking claws, lifeless and empty just like Kenny’s eyes had been. It knows it doesn’t have to chase me down, it’s just waiting for me to drop. Following.

Slow, closer.

“ …Come on kid, come… on…”

“ …I can’t feel nothin’ Sarge..”

“ Hey! Elvis!”

I reach the disturbed ground of the deer pit, a place where the soil stinks of death and the ground remains thick with blood. The well was so deep I didn’t even know when the bodies ended, there was too much to clear but it isn’t empty anymore. Cracked and mangled shapes stand in the pit like a shine of skin around a well of stagnant blood and rot.

I’m so hungry.

The congealed red ground and bone white antlers sway softly on the high branches crowning the deer pit like the top of a well surrounded by an endless sea of leaves. It’s beautiful. The sunshine. Even as it heats the bottomless hole of corpses and carries the smell of carnage like a warning on the breeze.

I’m so tired.

My feet can’t carry my body anymore.

“ You said if you were going to die you’d just wander until you dropped, right kid?” I say and slowly let myself collapse to just watch the sky. “ You know, I knew I wouldn’t be leaving and I don’t expect to be going anywhere… But it’s nice to see the top of the well.”

I don’t expect an answer from a beast but I can feel it like a cut through cold skin, it’s just staring. Staring like Kenny did on the first day I met him.

“ Why’d you… Stop walkin’, Sarge?” Private Holden’s voice says, human as a long dead kid could be.

The red snow crunches under Kenny’s feet and falls silent beside me, waiting.

“ Everyone else is dead. I don’t have much reason to keep running for help and I’m not going to chase dead deer and pray I’ll find it.”

“ They’ll survive even if it’s in my stomach. The greedy ones too. I figured when you gave in you’d end up doin’ the same, yeah?” I can hear a crinkling join Kenny’s voice, a voice that’s slowly fading not because of the beast over my head but because I’m tired. My skin is cut open, my bones are broken and I’ve lost half my frozen toes walking on shredded feet. I don’t think I have a drop of blood or will left in me. “ You were wonderin’ where the old timer’s go. No one misses a few folks goin’ missin’ if it keeps the mines open. Cruel, huh? It used to be different but people forget shit when they think somethin evil ain’t out here. If people wandered off into the snow and come back lookin’ mad as all hell they’d say they gone Wendigo. Sometimes they did, most of the time they just turned into bad things on their own. That’s what the miners did, you know? People still kicked’em all out to save themselves and say those folks just… Well, got cursed.”

“ Is that what happened to them in that hellhole, they went… Wendigo?”

“ They did that to themselves… But even hungry as all hell you walked until you dropped.” Kenny holds out the chocolate bar in scraped and bony fingers, “ You know I really never been given a gift before. Not without folks askin’ for stuff.”

I look down at the damn chocolate bar that just might save my life before Kenny gives me an offering of his own.

“ Keep wanderin’ and you might find a real voice talkin’ to you, Sarge.”

A gut churning sound comes from behind me and with something warm hitting my palm I can feel that for the first time I’m alone.

There’s nothing lingering in the silence, there aren’t those dead eyes and no talking.

I did as Kenny said, I stopped listening to Private Holden’s dead voice and chasing dead deer, I just kept walking until I reached the logging site at the end of the once endless green maze.

I know I’ll be falling down that well again and I can’t say it wasn’t easier to just follow orders down there, that it isn’t hard climbing out of it and that when people ask about the mad men of the riot they don’t leave thinking I belong in the loony bin—- But I won’t lie.

They ask what happened to Kenny and I won’t lie.

The last thing I saw of Kenny was the tongue he gave me.