The crackling of the fire was the only sound in the room. Every other noise seemed to be swallowed by the suffocating silence, like the world had forgotten how to make noise. Alice sat on the edge of the couch, staring into the flickering flames. It had been weeks since the news reports had stopped.
Weeks since anyone had even bothered to speak about the strange events happening around the world. The skies had darkened, and the ground had trembled, but it all seemed so distant, so far away. No one ever talked about it like it was real.
But Alice knew it was real. She could feel it in her bones. The air had thickened with something invisible, something suffocating. The sky had been stripped of its color, leaving it a dull, unnatural gray.
The heat had become unbearable, even though the windows were wide open and the fans had been on for hours. She had to sit here, in her dimly lit living room, because something told her that going outside was not an option. Not anymore.
She had seen them in her dreams. Demons, crawling through the cracks in the earth, their bodies grotesque and malformed. They had been there, beneath the surface, waiting. The ones in the dreams had never spoken, but their eyes, if they had any, told her everything. They were coming, crawling, fighting their way through whatever held them in place.
The first time she'd felt something, she'd brushed it off. It was just a flicker in the corner of her vision, nothing more than the house settling, she thought. But then it happened again. And again. And the shadows didn't just disappear when she blinked. They stretched, curved, and twisted in ways that didn't make sense, as if they had a life of their own.
The city had been abandoned. No one had come out of their homes for days. Alice had no idea what had happened to her neighbors. She hadn't heard a single voice for what felt like months, not since the sky turned black.
She couldn't keep pretending. It wasn't just the news. It wasn't just the shadows. She could feel it in her bones. The world had run out of space, and the demons were making their way here, where there was no more room for them to hide.
She had heard the old legends, of course, but who could believe in them? Hell wasn't a real place. But then there were the stories from around the world. Stories of strange things that crept out of the dark, of men and women torn apart by something they couldn't even name. The air had become so thick that breathing felt like dragging weights across your chest.
The first day she heard the sound, she thought it was just the wind. A deep, resonating growl that seemed to echo from the ground beneath her feet. But it didn't stop. It rumbled for hours, growing in volume, until it felt as though the earth itself was coming apart.
She could see it, the earth trembling underfoot, the cracks appearing without warning. She could almost hear the screams from below, muffled and distant, but still so close. And that's when she knew. They were coming.
Alice had stopped trying to sleep after the first week. She hadn't been able to close her eyes without seeing them—clawing, crawling, their hands reaching up from the ground. She'd heard whispers, too, though she didn't know if they were real. They were the kind of whispers you only heard when you were standing at the edge of a nightmare.
There were no signs of life left, but something inside her kept telling her to wait. Wait for what? The inevitable, perhaps. It was all she had left—waiting.
The door to her apartment creaked open. She hadn't heard anyone knock. She hadn't even heard anyone walk up the stairs. But there they were. Four figures stood in her doorway. They weren't human. They never had been.
One of them, tall and skeletal, dripped black fluid from its outstretched arms, its eyes hollow but endless, like looking into the abyss. Its skin was nothing but ragged pieces of flesh that barely clung to its bones. The others behind it were no better. They were misshapen and broken, barely holding together, their mouths twisted into grotesque smiles. They didn't speak. They didn't need to. The message was clear: they had finally come for her.
Alice's hands shook, but she didn't run. She couldn't. The air in the room had turned thick with the stench of decay, and her stomach turned over at the smell. She wanted to scream, but her throat felt dry, like it was filled with ash.
The creatures didn't enter at first. They hovered in the doorway, as if waiting for something. Maybe they were waiting for her to speak, or maybe they just wanted to see her suffer in silence. She couldn't move. She couldn't look away from their hollow, soulless eyes.
Then one of them stepped forward, slowly, with the same agonizing slowness of someone drawing out a death. Its bony fingers reached for her, but she didn't flinch. She couldn't. Its touch was cold, colder than the air around her, colder than anything she had ever felt. It felt like it was reaching into her very soul.
She closed her eyes.
And when she opened them, she saw them again. The same creatures, the same twisted, broken things, only now they weren't just standing at the doorway. They were inside her. She could feel them crawling inside her skin, inside her thoughts, inside her heart. They were in the walls, in the floor, in the air. And the whispers—they were louder now, all around her, telling her that it was too late. That there was no way out.
The creature's hand grabbed her by the throat, pulling her closer to its cold, lifeless body. Its mouth opened wide, revealing sharp, jagged teeth, and for the first time, Alice screamed.
But the sound didn't come out.
It didn't matter anymore. She had known this was coming. She had felt it, long before they ever arrived. The world had run out of space for them, and now they were coming for everything. The humans. The land. The sky. Everything.
It was then that she understood. It wasn't just about hell spilling into the human world. It was about the end of everything. There was no place for the living anymore. There was only a world for the dead, and the dead would always rise up from the cracks.
The creature's fingers dug deeper into her neck, and she gasped for breath, but there was none to be found. Her vision blurred, the world around her pulsing in and out, fading in and out, until it all went still.
And then, she was alone. The world was still dark. The air still suffocating. The whispers still there, relentless. The demons had gone, but only for now. They were never truly gone.
Because the earth had no room left.
And neither did she.