Ashfall

Ashfall

By:Zachery Enyart and Lakelyn Gallaway

1

CHAPTER

A new Beginning

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I awoke in what seemed to be a dumpster, there was trash and broken bottles everywhere. Luckily, I managed to be in the perfect spot to avoid serious injury. “Where am I?” I thought to myself, sweat fell from my forehead profusely. I saw some shadowy figures walk towards the dumpster I was in so I ducked down, they walked by and they turned out to just be some teenagers going down an alleyway after a party. I could tell they were drunk because they were walking and talking funky, slurring their words. They got to the end of the alleyway but something that one said still sent shivers down my spine “hey dude, that’s a big raccoon” “wait, where’s its ski-“ then he paused…seconds later I heard the most gut wrenching sound, a man’s blood curdling scream. That’s all I heard before I quickly made the decision to run. I got out in fear for my life and ran. I then heard a squishy sound behind me so I turned around and froze instantly. A skinless creature ripped open the teens’ stomachs, scooping their guts with its meek hands. It cracked bones, using them like forks to stab at the intestines. The sound made my stomach churn, I backed up slowly and when I turned around, I ran down the alleyway hoping whatever that creature was, wasn’t chasing me. I quickly turned around the corner and *WHAP* it all went dark.. I could feel someone or something dragging me across the hard, wet concrete floor of LA. It went black, then whatever was covering my sight was lifted off my head by some shadowy figure. “Hello there old pal… as I can see you have been, uhm.. well”

”Who are you?” I demanded

“Hm..i suppose you could call me Ralph’, now that we know each other I would like to show you something..” he then went behind a protective brick wall and said “LET THE GAMES BEGIN” a rotting, living corpse came out of nowhere. He was dark and light brown, like a leather type of color. He smelled of death and danger. He began to stumble slowly towards me as he twitched and jerked about. I scrambled my hands in a way and began to undo the knot. I was taught how to do that when I was a little boy. I quickly got up and used the chair I was sitting on to bash the creature over the head, *CRACK* *CRACK* *CRACK* was all I heard as the legs of the chair had begun to break off. The creature was still alive so, out of pure fear, I took the chair legs and started to beat the creature to a bloody pulp until it was, shall we say, disembodied. Ralph came out from behind the wall, clapping “well done Sheldon” he said slowly. “What do you want..?” I replied, my voice weary

“oh, I just want to know how well you can fight”

”Why?” I snarled

“you’ll see…” replied Ralph as he disappeared into the darkness. I saw the metal door that held the creature came out of was closing. I ran over to it and slid under the door before it closed. It was dark, like REALLY dark in there but then I felt something in my pocket. It was a lighter, “I….I didn’t put that in there” I thought to myself. I flicked the lighter on and as soon as I did I was face to face with a mannequin. “AHHHH” I screamed as I fell backwards. I got up and searched for my lighter since when I fell backwards I dropped it and the light went out. As I stumbled to get back up I heard a music box type noise coming from what seemed to be a room down a dark and wet hallway that seemed to just appear. When I went down the hallway I found a girl just humming to herself. “Hello…?” I said, waiting for a response, “uh, are you ok?” She kept humming the tune to tell Aunt Rhody. I went to walk into the room to make sure she was ok but then out of the blue I got smacked right in the middle of my face. When I woke up I was tied up in another chair, but this time the rope was double knotted and locked with a padlock that had a random sense of numbers, I slowly opened my eyes to see that my hands were tied in front instead of behind but my legs were tied to the chair, preventing me from moving. I looked and saw that the padlock had a red screen that had an alarm clock type of numbers. The clock started ticking 30…29…28, over the speakers Ralph spoke “come on sheldon, you want freedom? EARN IT!!!” I started panicking and noticed there were random numbers located around the room in yellow. I started looking around and saw the number 5, then shortly after 8, then 2, then 4. I put the numbers in with 10 seconds to spare. I chucked the timer while my hands were still tied, quickly untied my hands and legs with 5 seconds left. I looked around quickly while things got dizzy and my heart was bumping out of my chest. I found the exit and ran for it. 3..2..1…..BOOM!!! A loud explosion happened and it flung me out of the building hitting a car. I ended up hitting my back on the mirror of the car door and almost broke my back, I could barely walk or even see, everything was too blurry, all I saw was a blurry blaze of fire and bricks. The smell of smoke filled my lungs and I started coughing. I coughed into my hands and spat up blood…alot of it. The moon in the night sky was bright, I could hear sirens in the distance but also other people standing around, over all of that noise was a loud ringing noise, it seemed to just go on and on and on. My eyelids began to droop, my strength declining. As they started to close I could hear a faint voice yelling “STAY WITH ME…..COME ON…..1..2..3!!!” *BZZZ* I jerked up instantly but had a sharp pain in my side. I looked down and saw there was a large piece of glass sticking within my skin, and it refused to budge. It had somehow missed my large intestine but barely, with the large amount of pain I had I could guess it cut open my large intestine and I had internal bleeding. I looked at the doctors as they put me in the stretcher, “just lay back kid, we’ve got you” I simply just closed my eyes and everything went black…