“It started on the day where the world plummeted. Me and my 5 year old cousin were having a nice stroll in the park. It was his favorite activity to do. He would always ask me to go to the park whenever we went outside.” Rochelle changed her tone when she was telling her story, all the high energy and laid back attitude turned to sorrow. I could tell that this personal story meant a lot to her. “To be blunt, I didn’t have any parents growing up and I lived with my aunt. She was a kind woman who always took care of me, until she passed away.. She died in a deadly road incident; I couldn’t even look at the photos they took. I just knew how horrific they were and even became even more traumatized than I would be. The only thing left for me was myself and her little child at the age of 3. I raised him as if he was my own, and I started to grow attached to him,maybe due to keeping my aunt satisfied. She would be so proud of me if she saw what I was doing treating her son with care and love. Things wouldn’t last forever as I would’ve hoped;everything went downhill on that fateful day. As I said earlier, me and him went to the park one Saturday afternoon and we were having fun. Nothing seemed to get in the way between us. When he was going down the slide, I could feel the ground shake to be something of an earthquake. I was about to retrieve him when I saw something large popping out from the ground. A large hulking mass with long muscular arms that had black sludge covering its muscular structure . The same went for the legs which were shaped and positioned to resemble tree stumps. The body was held by an enormous dollhouse. The dollhouse had a unique physique to it. Its overall theme was meticulous; fitted with this creepy gothic layer to it.On the roof of the dollhouse, were spears piercing three identical baby doll heads, each with hollow empty eyes. I screamed to get his attention,but by that time it was already too late. The creature stomped on him,crushing all bones instantly. I couldn’t move when I saw that, I was struck by my shock and pain from the inside that made me unable to move. I couldn’t even feel the urge to produce tears, I was only stuck there,frozen like a statue. Something had snapped inside of me, which gave me the urge to run and hide. I remember the creature searching left and right for me, and I covered my mouth so the creature wouldn’t hear my tears. After some time had passed, the creature descended into the ground below, leaving me safe for now. I rushed toward the park only to stare at his dead body. I held his body and cried even more tears and repeated “I’m sorry” over and over again. And I basically ended up in the position I am today.” Hearing a story like that made me feel lots of guilt, even if I hadn’t been involved. You don’t really think about the other people suffering till you hear about yourself. Melody looked upset as well. I could tell she probably felt the same emotions that I did. She looked up at Rochelle and said, “I’m very sorry Rochelle, I didn’t think you could endure that much pain in such a short amount of time.” “No need to apologize, it's not your fault, nor anyone’s fault that this happened. It definitely did take some time to cope,but I got through and decided to recruit people here to help out the community of survivors that remain. Of course I still keep those memories stored deep inside me, since they’re so dear to me.” I was pretty thankful she told her story, mainly due to the fact that it brings a somewhat different light about the survivors here. The folks around here may have their own tragic story,but in actuality, they share an entire story they might not be aware of.
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It felt quiet after the whole story she told. No one had really attempted to start a conversation, besides staring at the fire. I took out my phone to look at the time which was nearing midnight. I knew we needed to head back to set up our tents and get some shut eye. “We're probably gonna head back to our camp and set up our tents.” Rochelle who looked pretty tired looked up at me, “Alright,well guess I can’t keep this circle entertaining for longer. It’s been interesting getting to talk to both of you. Promise you don’t forget about me ok?” “It will be pretty hard for us to not forget someone who has a sick hat.” “Welp, guess you guys best be off by now.” We waved goodbye, and headed back to our car to set up our tents. Rochelle stayed by the fire(most likely had slept there if I had to guess). It took us some time,but everything was eventually set up. By then we were very tired and couldn’t really think about anything else besides sleep. So we did just that and said our goodnights.
“Our little friends are fast asleep are they? Won’t it be to-too bad if they somehow woke up to some sort of danger. It would be qu-quite the struggle. Ho-ho, I just can’t wait. Let’s just see how well you both do tomorrow.”
Something felt off about yesterday. I couldn’t put my finger on it,just something mainly didn’t seem right. Maybe it was my anxiety telling me that something was very wrong,but I couldn’t be so sure. Sleeping was made very difficult,due to my worry of something that I still can’t figure out. All of that didn’t matter since I awoke to the sound of a man screaming, “Everyone get up and run.” I jolted awake from the voice of the man screaming. Melody would wake up after me as soon as I tried pulling her arm up. “What’s going on?” “No time,we need to run.” Our car wasn’t far from here,so leaving wouldn’t be such an issue. “Wait!”,Melody screamed at me which made me stop for a sec. “What about Rochelle?” I don’t think there would be enough time to go after her right now,but we couldn’t just leave her behind. Even if she was still a stranger,we couldn’t let someone like her die. We rushed towards her camp, our feet trampling all the leaves. The crunch of leaves make the city seem like something of a pleasant trail in the forest. Quite the opposite situation that we’re dealing with now. I could tell Melody had a worried look on her face, like she knew that the worse was about to happen or had happened. Turns out she was right, standing there was the massive dollhouse toppling over her camp. The description was exactly accurate to what Rochelle had said to us. The size of it was at least twice the size of an average person. The worst thing wasn’t even the hulking beast; it was the crushed lifeless body of Rochelle. The same fate that her cousin had endured, now she suffers the same fate. Some would call this an act of karma,but this was no act of justice. She was a person who suffered, she didn’t deserve this horrific fate. The hulking beast didn't even move a muscle, it only stared at her lifeless,fractured body. Melody had a look of anger, which coming from her, I would’ve assumed she would’ve had something of sorrow on her. This was the type of rage that boils in your blood ready to burst. She grabbed her handgun and shot at the beast. “Melody, what the hell are you doing?!” The dollhouse turned its body around to see where the shots had been fired. When it noticed who had shot the bullets, it opened the doors connected to its body which hurled flaming doll heads out at us. We made a break for it and fled towards our car. I didn't look behind me, all I could hear was the thud sounds approaching so ever closer to us. We arrived at our car and I fumbled for the keys. It didn’t take long to find it and I turned the keys in the lock and started the car. I stepped on the gas as quickly and hard as I could. I sped up till I hit a road, which meant that we were safe for now.
The drive to the next rest area was completely silent. Melody and myself didn’t say a single word during the drive. It was probably seeing someone like that left in state, after telling her tragic story to us and only to die the next day. This sorta sparked some anger in me to get to the headmaster as soon as I could. All these people were suffering because of this monster, there was still hope mixed in with rage;but I still can’t forget the promise that I gave to her.Not just to her,but to me Melody and the rest of the world. If only I had gotten to say a proper goodbye as soon as we left,but there is nothing we can do about it. Only thing we can do now is to keep looking forward to our goal. We are the last hope for humanity as a whole. While I was having lots of mixed emotions and optimism,I could tell Melody didn’t seem to feel anything. I couldn’t blame her,after what happened earlier,it’d be hard to feel any sort of positive emotion in your body. There were still two days till our destination, I knew that we needed to hurry. “Stop here!”. I slammed the brakes as soon as she said that. We were near a bridge,which wasn’t any of the destinations. When I stopped the car,Melody opened the car door and walked to the metal handle of the bridge. I knew why she wanted to stop; it was to relieve herself from all this stress and pain. Something that I should probably do as well. I opened the car door as well and went to the area with her. I placed my arms over the railing and just stared out at the open sea. We didn’t really talk,and I didn’t really think talking was necessary. It’s sometimes better to breathe on your own than with someone else. Seeing the open sea made me feel at peace. I could honestly just lie down and stare at the open seas. It's like I could forget about every bad event and just sleep peacefully. “Enjoying yourself.” Melody said while looking out to the open sea. “What about you?” “*Sigh* To be honest, while the sight is beautiful in its own right, I still can’t forget about everything that has happened.” “That’s understandable, we just needed some peace and quiet from this madness. It’s crazy to think that even through this hell, the world still manages to be majestic in a way.” “Heh, I guess that’s a nice outlook.” Even though Melody was still filled with the feeling of no emotion, she did start to ease up during our convo. “I could probably just lie here forever.” “Until the wild animals and crazy people come,” Melody slightly chuckled at her joke. “I don’t think the chances of both things are very likely.” “We should probably head back now, we still have a long way to go.” “Yea, we should start going now.” I suppose our little quiet time couldn’t really last for that long. We got inside the car and drove off to the next rest area. The GPS said our next area would be at least another hour from now. The area was another section of a smaller city. Not as large in scale as the last one,although the previous area didn’t feel that big,mainly due to us not exploring the area that much. As much as I would’ve liked to venture out into more of the place, I knew we would just be wasting time in general. I don’t know if our next encounter will be as pleasant as the last one. Melody would probably say we got lucky that the people there acted so friendly. A little later we had finally arrived at our second destination.
The city area was a bit smaller than one would’ve imagined. The place also seemed to be in an unblemished state, quite unusual from the last city we encountered. Although if I had to guess, I would say that the city hadn’t been quite as abandoned as the other one. This city was most likely safer than the last one if that’s the case. Almost every corner was filled with a sense of normalcy. Of course, looks could be quite deceiving from an outside perspective. I think I was more worried about Melody than anything else. I was afraid she would have lots of doubts and could cause something of a scene if something arises. Melody tapped me on my shoulder and said “We should probably leave, this place is very troublesome.” Melody definitely seemed to put on edge from the seemingly normal city. I guess she wasn’t wrong about something being off,but we needed somewhere to stay and maybe even gather some extra supplies. “I know that it may not look that humble from the outside,but we shouldn’t just leave yet.” “Maybe,but I’ll keep my guard up.” We walked from building to building to look for anyone, or anything. No one seemed to be in here at all, the city felt like even more of a ghost town than it already was when we first arrived here. “What have we got here?” A man’s voice, seemingly in his mid 30’s,spoke to us from behind. “I didn’t know we would be getting guests. Guess you guys are here cause you found out this town looked empty and decided to steal our stuff?” The man was seemingly muscular with a regular old white t-shirt fitted with long jeans and a belt. “N-no, we’re here because we needed a rest stop to spend the night at. We don’t want to interfere with anything you or your people here might have.” “And how the hell do I know I can trust you two. Your outsiders after all, we don’t exactly trust anybody out there.” “I’m just confused. If you want people out, is there a reason that it’s very easy to enter here?” The man looked a bit disgruntled at my question. “We just didn't have any time to put security over every single corner. Don’t need to question us about it, best you both leave.” Melody chimed in the conversation. “Sorry sir,but i’m afraid we won’t just simply leave cause you told us too.” “Excuse me? Do you know what the fuck kinda shit you’ll get yourself into if you stay here? You really don’t want to start pissing me off.” Melody just rolled her eyes, not at all caring about the threats he put on us. “Yea yea, sure…” “Alright, that’s it, I’ve fucking had it.” He started raising his arm and making a fist. He was about to swing when Melody took out her gun and shot his arm. “Ah, fuck!” Melody tugged out my shirt ushering me to go. “Cmon, let’s get the hell out of here.”
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