CREEP

You were born for this...

Layla kept looking at her watch nervously as the train sped on. Every stop she would mentally tick off the amount of stops until the end of the line. She was mad at herself, she normally had everything so meticulously planned, but this trip upstate she must have done the math wrong, or stayed at the party too late, she should have given herself more than an hour and half to get back she thought. Again, and again she looked down at her watch and up at the metro map. It was 11:45 and the parking garage would lock her car in at midnight.

Two more stops to go and she began formulating what she would do if she couldn’t get into her car. There was a hotel across from the station but no guarantee they’d have a room. She could call her friend Simon, but she couldn’t remember if he was out of town or not. On and on the list of plan B’s grew with the only certain to succeed one being calling her mother and waiting over an hour for her to drive to the city to get her, then enduring the ride home. She had resigned herself to either lucking out at the hotel or sleeping on a park bench.

The platform was still covered in white salt from the storm a few weeks ago. The resonant frost in the air stung Layla’s lips as she transitioned from warm metro car to the brutalist concrete island. It was 11:52. The train hummed as she began to trot adjacent to it, it’s day done and her’s hanging in the air. She didn’t have time to take in her surroundings; the only other person on the platform a blacked out blur in her peripherals.

The platform sat in the middle of the two tracks and connected to the station via an underground tunnel. Layla’s flats echoed around the tiled and graffitied enclosure as she sped up, quick to miss the stanchion advertisements as she was glued to her watch. 11:55.

Inside the station the vaulted ceilings made the already gigantic chamber seem more empty than it already was. The vestibules, shops and ticket counters all shuttered, not even a janitor in site. The entire space left open to the last inbound passengers. 11:58. Layla was getting worried. She hadn’t remembered exactly the direction to the garage and the signage was sparse. Rounding a corner quickly she skidded to a stop looking left at a dead end by the restrooms. Two people were standing at the end. She hesitated. She couldn’t quite make out their faces. They walked towards her simultaneously, slowly, as if creeping.

Layla’s instincts kicked in and she took the right, remembering the time and concerning herself less with the most likely janitors. 11:59. Outside the tinge of frost was familiar and less invasive. She pulled heavily on the spotted blue door to the parking garage. It’s weight didn’t budge. 12:02. Fuck. She traced her way around to the entrance to the garage. The opening wasn’t shuttered so maybe someone was still making the rounds and she could get out.

Inside the concrete parking garage the wind siphoned through the horizontal openings in an eerie harmonic. There were no cars parked on the first level, a cold concrete dessert. Layla had parked on the fourth level and winced in annoyance when the door to the stairwell wouldn’t budge. She began walking the horizontal zig zag of the garage up the access ramp.

Her footsteps echoed rhythmically. A monotonous one, two, one, two, then a one, two, three, four; she stopped and looked behind her for the source of the second set of footsteps. Paper and detritus was all that was behind her. It must be the echo, or the acoustics she thought. She continued on and by the second level again heard the second set of foot steps, and then a third, and fourth. She kept going, admittedly a bit on edge to stop and turn around. As she was about to turn the corner to begin her ascent to the third level she stopped. The echoes stopped too. She craned her head slowly, preparing. At the bottom of the ramp stood a man, in the middle of the roadway just like her. His face obscured by a hoodie. She stood there. She had seen this movie she thought, no sane woman would assume his intentions were good, she thought.

She turned and kept walking, then heard him do the same. She stopped, his footsteps stopped. She continued. So did he. Her heart was beginning to race and she debated breaking into a run, although she was sure he could catch her if he wanted to. She slipped off her shoes mid-stride and now the only sound was his foot steps, then more again. She looked over her shoulder and there were four identical figures now. She saw the stairwell door across the level and hoped maybe only the first level was locked. She ran.

Over her shoulder she saw the figures marching towards her but not picking up their pace. Their gait shifting, becoming less fluid, more erratic as if they weren’t used to walking this much. She lost site of them down the ramp and yanked hard on the stairwell door, it flung open and she slipped inside the anti-chamber, immediately feeling a warm wetness on her socks as she grabbed the railing.

Layla smacked a hand over her mouth to cover the rest of her scream. It was blood! All over the floor and running, flowing almost, down the stairs in front of her and down the stairwell further and further like a river. Gallons and gallons of flowing crimson blood! She almost couldn’t move. Her car was up one level and the figures were behind her. The space devoid of anything except stairs and blood. She was defenseless. She began climbing upward, step by bloody step. What was this, what was happening? Her mind raced and reeled in limitless fear. What would she see at the top of the stairs? What would she see at the top of the stairs?

She reached the 4th floor door and as her hand touched the knob something grabbed her from behind! She began to shake and writhe in it’s grasp, screaming and kicking!

“Hey hey, hey! Calm down calm down!” said the voice that had grabbed her “You’re ok, you’re ok, didn’t mean to startle you.”

Layla opened her eyes and turned to see a tall and stocky security guard standing before her, she looked down at her hands and feet and the floor. No blood. It was gone as if it was never there.

“Who the fuck just grabs someone like that!!!”

“Sorry, sorry, I was coming around the corner and was about to bump inta ya, then you just went off, you ok?”

She decided not to mention the blood.

“I, I’m just on my way to my car, and these, this group of guys were following me that’s all.”

“Gates locked, I’ll have to let you out at the bottom, how many fellas was it?”

“Three, I think, just walking behind me, stopping when I stopped.”

“We get weirdos from time to time, let’s get to your car and I can let you out at the bottom”

“Ok”

she breathed a little lighter, trying not to dwell on the blood in the stairwell, the figures, and where it had all gone. The security guard opened the door and they both stepped out onto level 4. Layla could see her car at the end of the row. What a night. As the two walked to her car another figure appeared behind them, silent, then another and another and another. The two walking unaware of the gathering behind them. Like some intuition, Layla looked over her shoulder. There was nothing but frosted grey concrete and pained lines, smooth walls and arrows. She turned back to look forward all the air left her body

Her car was surrounded by hooded figures all identical to the first. The security guard stopped as well, except he was silent. Layla looked up at him and could only scream as the air returned to her lungs. Gone was the security guards eyes, only bloodied mucus filled sockets were left. His mouth was spilled open, blood pouring from it like a faucet. He turned to her, arms outstretched but with no intention of grabbing her and let out an otherworldly, wet, gore laden roar that Layla could spend years describing and not get right.

She started to run again the other direction. The security guard stood there still, his screams like a siren. The figures all marched towards her, slowly, then faster, then faster, then they dropped to their hands and began shuffling in a twisted animalistic gallop, nothing about it human. The entire level of the garage was empty, a barren hopeless waste. She headed for the down ramp, out of the garage is all she wanted at this point. She screamed help, help, help, to only be returned by her own echoes and the hoof like patter of her assailants.

Then it stopped. It was only her feet again on level 3.

Layla looked behind her and there was nothing. What was going on, it couldn’t be the booze from the party, she had sobered up on the train, no one had slipped her anything, she thought.

An eerily calm breeze swept in, sweet and hypnotic almost. A lull creeped over her body. The concrete wall she was facing began to open up. Like an orifice or a stretching wound the concrete stretched silently, pouring a purple light out into the garage. Layla did not feel scared.

Behind her the hooded figures remerged. Layla began walking towards the light, an urge to enter it flooding over her sense of self. She was close enough to touch the opening when she snapped to and turned to run. The hooded figures were upon her and pushed her into the purple void.

Darkness, darker and more palpable than when the lights are off consumed her. She could tell there were things, people maybe, moving around her, she could feel her feet on the ground but nothing else but damp air all around her. She called out.

“WHERE THE FUCK AM I, HELP!”

It’s all she could mutter. Was this another hallucination or creation, like the blood, like the security guard, like the hooded men? She began walking forward, one hand outstretched. She moved slowly like a toe or a foot cautiously searching for bottom in dark waters. Her fear rolled down her forehead as her mind battled with the unknown she might come in contact with. After what seemed like ten or so yards she felt cool porous concrete and let out a small sigh. She knew at least, like any maze, she could follow a wall to a door. She began tracing the wall as she walked.

Suddenly, the cool rock gave way to sticky yet slick, knots and bumps, hair and….teeth? She released, and slowly went to touch the wall again. Her fingertips met by cold concrete again. She was too afraid to continue but she had no choice.

Layla traced the wall and knew she wasn’t going in circles at least, she hadn’t run into four right angles yet, or more teeth. A dip in the concrete, the feel of metal, she clamored and yanked down on the door handle, light creeped from the opening but couldn’t pierce the darkness of the room as she left, she didn’t bother looking behind her anyways. Heavy distant breathing was all she heard from the darkness as she closed the door.

It was a utility hall way. flickering lights, janitorial equipment and garbage bags lined the left wall with another door at the end. As she walked she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, she hadn’t even thought to pull it out, everything was happening so fast. No signal, of course, glad we got that out of the way, she thought.

Opening the next door she flew up a flight of stairs and exited back onto the first level. She could hear the rush of cars from the overpass, even see some lights from other buildings. The security booth and gate right in front of her. She was safe from whatever the fuck had just happened or didn’t happen to her.

The faceless security guard emerged from the door behind her and shrieked, grabbing her and dragging her back like a spider into the stairwell, disappearing in a flash into the darkened well, Layla hadn’t even managed to scream.

She opened her eyes to see the purple glow opened wide in a square in the wall. She frantically darted her eyes around unable to move her neck. The walls were covered in gore, bones, teeth, stomachs, entrails, all manner of limbs. And they moved! They slithered and groaned and twitched; an amorphous blob of living death stretched across the walls and floors. She could feel and see tongues and lips lapping at her feet, eyes starring up at her. She felt bile rise in her gut. Her hands were bound by ropes of skin and bone to the center of the room. She found no point in screaming.

A voice from behind her

“You, were born for this.”

Several hooded figures, now in dark bloodied robes passed by her and stood before the purple void.

“What?”

She muttered past vomit in her throat.

The figures slowly removed their hoods from their faces. Layla expected twisted visages like the room around her. But they were…she knew them. It was her mother. Her father. Her friends from the party. Her neighbor. Her Highschool principle, and more!

“You were bred for this.”

Said her mother. Said her father. Said them all in unison as gnarled tentacles laden with human teeth slithered slowly out of the purple void, hugging the edges of the orifice like tongues lapping at lips.

“Nog r'luhhor, ng ymg' mggoka fhalgof'n wgah'nagl!!!”

A guttural speech rose from their sternums in unison as the tentacles reached for Layla, pulling her into it. Layla’s screams split the air and began to muffle as one of the tentacles slithered down and into her throat, silencing her.

In an instant Layla shot up from the couch, sweating and panting. The party was winding down around her. Her friends hadn’t noticed her on the couch it seemed. She looked around then down at her watch, 10:34, she had a train to catch….