Javier

2.

-HER-

I hesitantly looked around before walking into the deserted alley. I was clutching my phone hard in my with a mixture of anxiousness and frustration because I was constantly ringing Casandra but she wasn’t picking it up.

I walked deeper into the alley until the warehouses on both of its sides grew so tall that they erased the sky.

“This is an odd place for an art exhibition,” I muttered to myself before I checked the address that I had been given. I was following it to the ‘T’ but I wasn’t very sure about the place it had gotten me to. Deciding to go back and call Casandra again, I spun on my heels and started walking.

The place seemed so off. My heart beats shot up as soon as I read the sign ‘private property’. I simply kept my head down and increased my walking speed. Suddenly, the wind blew from the direction I was headed to. 

It brought a very foul smell to me. It definitely belonged to the decaying body of some animal but there was something about that smell that had me jogging. My mind was suddenly conjuring up images of dead bodies and crime scenes. It made the situation worse. I was mentally cursing myself for even coming this deep into the alley.

My heart pounded in my chest when I stood at an intersection and realized that I have forgotten the way I had come in. My breaths were laboured as I looked around and decided to go left. I tried calling Casandra again but there was no reply. All of the texts that I had sent her were unanswered too.

I could almost hear my heart pounding in my chest when I reached a dead end. I tried to call again but I suddenly noticed that the network bars on my phone had dropped. As I looked around at the huge warehouses with no windows, I got this sense of being trapped.

My guts were screaming at me to get out from that strange place as soon as possible. I decided to turn around and jog back to the intersection. I kept jogging and one point, I gave up jogging and was simply running as if I were being chased by some wild animal but the intersection never came.

I let out a short breathy cry as I looked at the warehouses around me again. All of them looked the same and there was something about them that screamed at me to run as fast as I could so I did. I ran in whichever way I could find but the warehouses never disappeared. 

I felt trapped. I was starting to get desperate to get out of there. The desertedness of that place was starting to seem eerie to me. It felt like I was being watched from somewhere. I was being watched!

The feeling instantly made my skin crawl. I checked my phone but there was no network. At this, I let out a loud cry. I didn’t know what has happening anymore. I Was drenched in my own sweat as the blazing sin peaked through the caps between the warehouses.

My mouth and throat were soon achingly dry. I felt so helpless there. I swore I could hear my thundering heart echo in the grim silence.

“Hello,” A very deep spoke behind me. I stilled before slowly looking at it over my shoulder. It was a man. He seemed sickly pale. He was dressed in fine suits and his eyes were covered with dark shades. His slick black hair was combed back to expose his forehead. I looked around him in bewilderment. 

It was odd because I didn’t hear him approach. 

“I suppose you are lost here,” He spoke very briskly as he stepped towards me. I gulped before I answered, “Yes,”

He nodded at me before saying, “I will get you out of here. Follow me,” He spoke as he walked past me. As he passed me, I was able to get a whiff of his scent. My nose instantly wrenched as I encountered that same foul smell that I had gotten before.

He reeked of it and it instantly made me very suspicious of him but I knew I had no other option but to follow him. I was already lost there and he seemed to know the place very well. I hesitantly followed him. He looked over his shoulder at me to make sure that I was behind him.

“What is this place?” I asked him but he remained silent and kept walking. I followed him. He stopped in front of one warehouse before he pressed some invisible button on its wall and suddenly a door appeared out of nowhere.

It opened to darkness before he stepped inside it and looked over his shoulder again as if telling me to follow him inside. I hesitated at first but somewhere deep down I knew that if I didn’t follow him then something bad will happen.

I checked my phone again but there was still no network. I clutched it in my hand painfully before I stepped inside the warehouse behind that strange man. It was very dark inside. I had to clink several times in the dark for my eyes to adjust to it.

The door slammed shut behind me instantly before everything was drenched in darkness. I couldn’t help but gasp at it while my heart threatened to dig its way out of my chest.

“This way,” I heard him say. I could still his figure through the semi-darkness and I followed him. I tried to look around but the darkness was preventing me from seeing much but that smell of something decaying was so strong, it was making me sick to the stomach and all my senses were flashing the danger sign to me.

“What is this smell?” I asked at one point as I tugged the top of my blouse to up to cover my nose. He kept walking and I kept following but it wasn’t long when I finally started to hear some strange screeches. 

The man in front of me and made a strange sound which sounded like a growl and those strange noises stopped.

“What was that?” I asked him but he didn’t answer me and continued walking through the darkness. I didn’t have any other option other than following him. It would be foolish to stop there. the fact that I had gotten myself in that situation in the first place was the most foolish thing anyway. 

At one point he halted on his steps, making me do the same. He turned around to face me before reaching for something and pulling it open. Blinding light filled the room. I blinked several times before I was finally able to see the road filled with people.

I sighed in relief.

“Tha-“ Before I could finish speaking, he shut the door open. The next thing I felt was something wrapping me from behind by my neck before dragging me deeper into the darkness while I screamed and threw my hands and legs.

“Shut her up,” Was the last thing I heard someone say before something heavy landed on my head, breaking my scream.