[Excerpt from the diary]
Kristol and I made it through the time the lights went off, or night, as we've started to call it. We took turns sleeping while the other kept a lookout with one of the phones. We didn't have a way to reacharge them other that with the external battery she carries in her bag, we have chargers but without outlets, they were pointless.
I was startled awake when the darkness I had been sleeping in suddenly changes to glaring brightness.
Sitting up too quickly, my teeth clicked as I smakec my head against the shelf above the one I was laying on. While I rubbed my head and mouth, I struggled through the morning fog to remember where I was and how I had come to be sleeping on an inventory rack.
Calling out to Kristol, it took a bit for her to walk back over to where I was. She had apparently wandered off looking at a section we hadn't noticed yesterday. One full of clothing.
When I came to, she was wearing a different outfit compared to yesterday. When I asked why she had changed into clothes we hadn't paid for she brought up the point that we didn't know how long we were going to be stuck in this store, and that we had opened a carbonated drink yesterday to satisfy our thirst. Yeilding to her point I didn't raise anymore of a fuss.
We committed to exploring the area, see if there was any food nearby, we did have a few snacks on us, but without anything of substance we would start having to rely on our fat stores, as someone who was into bodybuilding/sculpting, I don't have much of that in reserve.
/|
/ |
After a bit of w/ |ering we saw a group of figures in the / \ance, they were wearing the clothes o \ / employees in the store, maybe they kn\/w the way to the exit? Kristol and I, wanting to be done with this ordeal as soon as possible, started running towards the group, as we got closer I started to see slight irregularities in the forms of these employees, for one thing one of the. Seemed taller than an average person, another seemed to have arms that were miss matched, one large and muscular and the other rather average looking. Another peculiarity about them was that they were all bald, nothing against folks that are bald, but it felt odd that a store would hire such a large number of them, especially with how leathery their scalps were, while there were no wrinkles I could see, but their heads lacked a luster that most bald people's scalps have. It wasn't until we were almost 20 feet away from them that we noticed the other weird things about the employees, a few of them had strange tentacles instead of limbs like arms and legs, one had only fur tentacles instead of arms and legs, there were more mismatched body parts, ones without tentacles had limbs that either did not match each other or did not match the proportions of their torso and/or legs. The eeriest part about them however were their completely smooth faces except for where their mouthes would be, from where the nose would be and up, the front of their face was a smooth oblong curve, but below looked like a mouth sealed under several layers of skin, slowly opening and closing, the skin stretching and caving inward occasionally, but never breaking.
"Wh-what are those things?" Kristol whispers to me, we would have screamed if we could, but we were afraid of drawing these monstrosities' attention, it seemed like they were crowded around something in the middle of their group, their sealed mouthes opening and closing seeming to make silenced words, however we could hear unintelligible whispering coming from their area, breaking the silence we had grown used to.
We slowly backed away from the group and went in a different direction.
We started to wander once more, we came across the endcap where we had gotten the drinks we were carrying in our bags, it had been restocked, the display had been completely refilled except for two cans. Had those employees restocked during the night? Why would they miss leave two spots empty? We ponderd for a bit and agreed that it didn't make sense until we realized that the only sane reason why those two cans were missing, was because there was someone else nearby. Quickly we walked around looking for signs that a person has come through, we almost tgave up hope until we noticed cut marks on the shelves and displays it looked like someone was making their path through the labyrinth of aisles.
Picking a direction, we prayed that we were going the right way and walked quickly down it. We kept following the marks, almost giving up several times but kept walking through, sometimes having to search for the marks as we turned corners and crossed walkways.
Eventually we saw a person in the distance, they were carrying a large backpack with several water bottles, and had a large spear made of a collection of materials including Duct Tape strapped to it. They were standing still looking down at what seemed to be a journal. Not wanting to come across as a threat we stopped in place and called out to them.
Initially hearing our voices we saw the person tense up before calming down when they saw us. They waved us over and put their book away before pulling out another.
Twe walked over and tried to introduce ourselves, but they didn't respond and only started to scribble in their book, it wasn't until they flipped the paper to face us and we read the words that we realized that it wasn't them being rude but rather them not being able to speak our language, apparently they were raised in another language, and only knew how to understand and write English but didn't have confidence in their ability to speak it well.
They introduced themselves as Kim Ryong-Song, or as he's has been come to be known by others, Compass. He wrote that he was currently on an expedition to deliver news from a colony to another, and his talents in exploration alongside his surname's meaning were why his nickname was Compass.
Kristol were both happy and frustrated upon hearing about the colonies, on one hand we were happy knowing that we would not be alone in this eerie place and that we were not the store's only victims, but the fact that people had been around long enough to have to set up colonies did not bode well for a swift exit from this place.
We asked Ryong-Song if we could accompany him to the colony he was heading to, he said that he would not recommend it due to the resource shortage it's inhabitants had been experiencing, but the one he had left a few days ago, he wrote down instructions on how to get there, and just as we were about to bid each other goodbye the lights suddenly cut out.
Somewhere nearby we heard a familar voice saying "the store is now closed, please exit the building..."
-to be continued.