(Rose)
My head is numb.
I'm waking up but my memories don't as they're supposed to.
My head hurts and I have a hard time remembering everything that usually comes back in a second after waking up, or regaining consciousness.
My name... Where am I...
I rapidly recall who I am.
Where I am and why, remains fuzzy. Same goes for why I'm hurt so bad.
I'm being washed ashore. The sea spat me on a harsh shore of stones and dirt. It's dark, night time.
My left eye hurts, and can't see a thing.
I manage to crawl out of the water. I cough and almost suffocate as I can't breathe for a minute. I breathe heavily. My arms on which I barely manage to pull myself up are trembling a lot.
I crawl like an animal a little higher, aside from the shore.
I hear the waves splashing just below me. I see the stars above. I hear the sound of the wind against the cliffs and the shore.
I'm cold but I barely can feel it now.
I'm hungry... I think.
My clothes are ripped and all my body hurts.
I'm missing something important I can feel.
Blume doesn't reply when I ask her about it.
She's never been so quiet.
Have we reached the sea already? She doesn't know where we are either I guess.
I'm beginning to be scared, as I end up realising that I'm alone.
I'm standing up slowly. I'm unsteady and holding myself.
Behind me are the shore and cliffs to higher land, rather high on each side.
Ahead is a path lost in the midst of night, in a place I don't know.
~
I begin to walk a path heading up, soon entering small woods.
I'm alone and hurt. I'm getting anxious. How did I survive my fall... What happened...
This reminds me of my first steps into the new world...
I become really anxious.
But it cannot be like that again. The human monsters all died a long time ago. They're just a bad dream now.
Sudden exposure to that new energy creates horrors violently, but they don't last. Chemical reactions don't last...
I'm lost in those woods now. I need to stop and breathe every few steps. My lungs hurt. My ears have dry blood in them.
But worst, I've lost her...
We've been separated during the accident... We've never been separated like that before. We will both try to find each other.
But I guess she is in no better shape than I now... I have to find her.
She can't be far...
I think I hear the echoes of screams very far in the distance...
It's like I'm entering from its far outer edge the nightmare of someone else. I'm still safe where I am, but something horribly violent is occurring somewhere in the distance.
My back is hurting me as if it had been roasted and sliced, eaten. I want to know what happened, and what is happening now.
I hear screams, far from here.
I like to know why things happen... Yet sometimes they just happen and we cannot fathom why...
I find the ruins of a shed a little further. Just behind a fallen and broken wall.
The shed too is in rotten pieces. As I stumble behind it, I find myself between two other small buildings that survived slightly better.
The doors are missing and there are shadows moving inside both, as far as I can tell.
There are no ghosts, but I'm tired and need to rest. I enter the first abandoned building. There's a small crumbling boat inside.
Ah, the shore is near, so there's a boat. I see.
I can barely see, but there's nothing to look at. The walls are void of anything worth looking at. It's rather desolate truly.
I keep hearing screams and cries very far away. Humans? I'm feeling very uneasy.
I sit against the wall behind the small boat. Through the opening on my right, I can see the sea below and not that far.
And some kind of crane to bring the boat down to the water on the side, I think.
I sit there, trying to ignore the whispers in the night and ominous sounds in the distance.
I try to reassure myself...
I know what I have to do; find Blume...
Nothing else matters I think...
I'm feeling uncertain and worried.
I try not to think about the voices in the distance. I try to convince myself they're just a bad dream, an expression of my growing anxiety.
I lean on the side, and let the exhaustion pull me back to sleep. I'm so empty, I do end up sleeping, or passing out.
In my dreams, I saw butchery, and slaughter of people...
Something killing humans and animals alike, violently, pointlessly.
The screams haunt me.
I'm getting spooked. Slowly, that fear is blooming within me.
I have this growing fear looming around my throat. I have no clue about what's going on around, and I begin to fear the worst.
~
The worst isn't quite what I thought, but it's still bad.
As I wake up, I realise I've lost track of time and of my health, as it is still night time outside, and it feels as if I slept only for a few hours.
Why not more? A ghost ran at me, screaming, and I woke up in a terrified jolt.
Why did I have a nightmare about a ghost.
I try to stand up, and manage it, my body still aching a lot. More than that, I'm hungry and thirsty.
I walk back into the woods. The night is now quiet. The screams have ceased. I eat some random plants I find. I don't feel any better.
Something is moving behind me. I turn around but no one is there. My mind seems unsteady.
I return to the boat house. Outside, there's a long wall running by it, and a gate a little further, away from these few buildings. The wall seems to circle a wide property, for what's left of it anyway.
The gate is open and a decaying road starts behind. The road must lead somewhere more interesting.
I hear whispers anew.
Something coming this way. I hide in the other building next to me, and glance at the gate through the broken window, hidden.
Something does appear. It looks human enough, but in a worse state than I somehow. It puts uncertain steps one after another, moaning. It looks severely wounded too.
It looks neither like a human nor the kind of monsters I've feared to encounter again.
I stay hidden as it walks to the boat house, moaning its pain. I still don't know how I should act.
It goes down through the stairs I didn't notice, to the pontoon above the water behind. I can't see the shape any longer from where I am.
I slowly go after it, staying as hidden as I can as I remain sure of nothing.
I'm above the small cliff. The pontoon is below on the right, and the thing stands there on it, looking at the sea.
It's ghastly. What is it?
All I can say so far is that it surely used to be human...
It stays there. It looks around, as if searching for something out there on the sea.
And then, I think it dies. It drops on its knees, pukes, and falls there lifeless.
After a while of cautious waiting, and seeing nothing happening, I go and take a closer look at it.
I slowly get closer to the body on that rickety pontoon above the sea.
The corpse is badly mutilated, and very dirty, but it does look like a normal human.
There's a strong unpleasant smell coming from it, and it's not just blood or vomit. A tone of it reminds me of something very bad. There's a smell of death but with a twist to it I can't quite recall, but that triggers a worry inside of me.
There is something more worrisome than death itself about this poor man I'm looking at.
He suddenly jumps back to life and attacks me, screaming.
I fell on my bottom in a scream of pain and fear as he did. He's biting my leg with what's left of his broken jaw. I fight him off with what's left of my strength and manage to push him aside.
He falls into the water, scratching my shoulder as he tried to hand on.
The water swallowed him. He seems gone.
I'm catching my breath back. I was scared, really scared.
The night is still clear and peaceful. The stars are the same as before above me.
Where is she now? I'm worried...
I stand up painfully. I see another ghost and almost step back to fall in the water too.
Someone was just there I could swear. A child perhaps, or a teenager.
I walk back to the gate and hesitate a few seconds.
Something is very wrong here and I'm getting jumpy at the idea of going further in.
I walk my way in...
~
The woods are creepy. The smell of death doesn't leave me. I remember the cries I heard before.
The woods end rapidly over fields. Crops. Attended crops I can tell. It's winter, though the weather isn't that cold currently, so nothing grows, but I recognise it. Patches of various vegetable are placed here and there. This place is civilised.
I think.
The road passes by a large truck wreck on the side. And a little further, it stops on a cliff right above water, only higher than before.
The road collapsed. A piece of the land abruptly fell into the sea there.
I walk slowly across the field and around the hole. I can't really tell what's beyond, it's dark.
It's night time but I feel as awake as if it was day already and through.
I'm walking on the void ground, ahead. I still head the sea in the distance, behind and all along the road. I hear the wind. And I hear the ghastly moans and sighs in the distance ahead...
I hear a river a little further.
I smell blood.
I reach a building. A farm, probably. But the roads splits on the right and becomes a square on the left. I've reached a small village.
I stop moving and listen. I only hear the river or the stream rather, that goes through.
I walk carefully into this square long abandoned, often looking behind my shoulder.
I keep hearing odd nonsensical whispers in the distance as if the place was haunted, but I'm probably just imagining those.
There's a fountain in the middle of the square, working. Someone lies against it. Someone dead I think from afar.
I hear moans coming from inside the house I'm walking by.
The door is open. It's too dark inside for me to see what there is.
I hear a strange noise behind me. I turn and see a dog running at me from afar. I'm scared. I get inside and shut the door.
The dog reaches it a second later and starts barking. I don't like it at all. I realise I'm in danger.
The growls turn into a terrifying gurgling over the following second, and then it fades.
Behind the door that I now slowly open, are just a pile of bones and liquefying dead flesh. Oh that putrid smell makes me nauseous.
The dog died there in a way that reminds me of something.
I hear the moans again behind me, coming from within the house. I leave the death outside for now.
I turn around. A corridor plunges in the night ahead. The door on my right is open to a kitchen I think...
The wind plays with the curtains and my mind. The wood of the old house creaks. I hear ghosts everywhere...
I swallow and slowly proceed inside.
~
At the end of the corridor is a door leading downstairs but I'd rather look at the ground floor first.
As I'm looking around the kitchen I realise some people do live here. There are stocks of vegetables in boxes and in the furniture, as well as dry meat in pots.
I can't help myself and eat a few leftovers of dry bread that lied on the table and by the sink.
I hear noises of stumbling above my head. Something's up there.
I grab a knife and slowly head up the stairs. In another time, I would have just called for help empty handed, but I'm still lucid enough to realise that right now, I shouldn't do that.
I panic for a second as I see my reflection in the window at the end of the stairs, before realising my mistake.
Then there's a room, empty. The bed is clean and set. Someone didn't use it tonight as planned?
Behind the bed is a slim door to another room, where the moans come from.
I enter. There's blood in the air. The wafts are heavy. Someone died here. And someone else is now crying over the deceased body.
A man, wounded, is there in the dark room, curtains shut to the night light, but window broken to their winds. He's sobbing over the shattered flesh of someone else.
When he notices my presence, he seems more scared than I am, and tries to flee through the normal door to this room, which he had apparently forgot he locked before.
He then realises I'm not attacking him as his enemy, as he stands at the door, sweating and breathing. I didn't try to pursue him.
He's trembling a lot. He's lighting a lighter. I see his face, but everything else fades.
He's asking who's there I think. So I show myself. He jumps slightly as he discovers me. I must look horrifying.
That's how I met him.
He indicates me that we should hide and stay quiet, more in the way he speaks than what he says. I can't understand much of what he's whispering, but I get the idea that something lethal is on the loose out there and it's hard to describe. I know the feeling.
We hear footsteps outside.
And a discorded voice turning into a loud scream. It enters our heads with sharp pain.
We pass out.
~