"This better be the goddamn final chapter..."
"Are you sure they're all six feet under?"
"Yep, stone-cold dead, they're not breathing."
"But they look alive, for fuck's sake! Look at this one, aged around 80 years if my memory serves, yet he looks like he's stuck at seventeen. Why the hell are we chucking them away?"
"Man, do you even work here? The whole facility's a damn ghost town; they're shutting down the whole freakin' experiment. Claimed it mutated or some cosmic shit, and the government slammed the brakes on us."
"Shit, what does that mean for us?"
"I don't know, man, but we're out of a damn job."
"What in the abyss was that?" I asked myself. A twisted nightmare? Another eldritch vision? No, it can't be. I have no clue what the hell they're blabbering about. I tried to open my eyes, but it was just an endless void. Time here flows like a cursed river, and I don't know how long I've been like this—no memories, no vivid life coursing through my being. No agony at the thought of my own demise. "Have I escaped the cosmic limbo?" was my first question, but that's impossible. I'm dead. There was an oppressive weight on my chest and foreign hair on my face. It's real. I tried over and over again to claw my way out of whatever this abyss was. "M ali..." but my voice betrayed me; searing pain replaced where my vocal organ should be. Blood rushed in my veins, and my heart pounded as it did the day it stopped.
"I'm ALIVE!" I bellowed as loud as I could until I breached the surface of the nightmarish mound I was under. When my eyes adjusted, I found myself halfway out, only to survey and realize that the mound is composed of grotesque dolls.
Soft, eerily human-like dolls. "FUCK!" I clawed my way out. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I emerged from the pile and perched on the edge of the macabre pit. Those were humans...or once were. My eyes couldn't tear away from the grotesque heap; it was repulsive, yet not a single body decayed. Why? How is that? As my thoughts spiraled, I came to the realization that I was one of them until just now.
"Hey! Is someone there?" My voice reverberated in the vast, stygian chamber, likely a forgotten warehouse where they dug a hole and dumped us in.
"Anybody?" But no response echoed from the heap. My feet shuffled on the cold, solid ground around the pit, and I discovered a mound of clothes. My hands sifted through them; most were military-looking attire—camo jeans, heavy boots, and a classic khaki shirt.
"Better than nothing," I muttered to myself and donned the garments. Through the dim light filtering from above, I assumed it was approaching evening.
Once I found the right fit, I strode toward the doors. A sign proclaimed Storage 28, and a small board with information caught my attention. What grabbed me was a message under the header saying GRON. "Storage 28 will be ready for incineration on the 7th of July at 4 pm."