Forgotten

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

It should have been a mountain. A mountain on an island surrounded by ocean. Maybe that’s where Mariah Boucheron should have had her honeymoon. Where her husband, not Kayden, had taken her to her bedroom, had bedded her, over and over again.

Instead, they had elected for a cabin in the woods. It had a lake, anyway, so there was that. But what a crapsack experience despite the environment. Waking up to light shining from outside through closed windows. Not knowing who shined them though. Getting sick, spending the week and weekend vomiting and emptying her bowels over and over again.

Ironic. She was now in an environment that stank of piss and shit and vomit. Blood and whatever other fluids were mixed in. This damned factory was insanity’s sick joke. This was a sadist’s twisted brain. Yet, at the moment, it was just a room with four walls, a floor and a ceiling.

It had a computer but no TV. It had a sink but was no bathroom or kitchen. It wasn’t their bedroom, it had no bed, but the man and the woman within it only needed the sink for what they did.

The only scent was sweat, glistening between their bodies, and the stenches beyond were lost on Mariah. The floor was cold beneath warm skin. She welcomed it. Lying naked on the floor with Kayden, cold but not alone, safe in this save room, they just looked at each other side by side, eyes into eyes.

“We have to leave soon.”

Mariah broke the moment, regretted it in an instant, denying her own lies, that fantasy might be the same damn thing as reality, but that was a pathetic fallacy.

“We’ve got flashlights, a machete, a crowbar. I found a flip knife. Got a keycard.”

She didn’t mention the key. She didn’t know why.

“And lips that won’t quit.”

They both grinned. Maybe that was ironic. Maybe that was the madness.

“All right. I’m in. I’m with you, woman. We’ll get dressed. We’ll open the door. We’ll shine our light in the darkness, cloak in shadows, and get the fuck out of this piss-shit pit.”

“Now you’re speaking my language, man.”

“Thought I was speaking it some moments ago when I made you moan.”

They kissed. Maybe a moment passed. Maybe moments. Time meant nothing in this safe space, though. So, whatever happened next, maybe seconds became minutes, and they did it all over and over again. East of the sunrise, west of the sunset, south of hell. Behind a steel door. In the real north.

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

The corridor beyond the door was as dark as when she had left it. Past the entrance whose room was still lit at her back, exposing the shadows between both planes of existence, Mariah had to admit it: she wanted to go back and never look back.

Really, that was the madness. That was the fallacy. The human instinct to run away from danger. To flee. To hide. Despite knowing there was nothing left in that room in this hell she wanted to glue herself to, like that bedroom that was in her past, an apartment that may never be coming back.

There was no food. No water. Not really. There was nothing, really. To survive this undying night, Mariah knew in truth that she had to once again step out into the void, face the music, hear the voices whether they sing or scream, and dance with the night wind.

At least she had more items coming out than she did when she went in. Could both her and Kayden say the same about this prison they were in? Maybe. Maybe, before their end, they would leave this factory, wounded as much as unscathed, as one, in union, and live in a new beginning.

For now Mariah would settle for the lights turning on. Their flashlights shined but there was something uniquely creepy about shining light to guide your eyes while seeing total darkness surrounding that circle so round.

It was like knowing, whether you opened your eyes or closed them, the monsters were around you either way. You couldn’t close your eyes and wish them away. When you opened your eyes their faces would be inches away, would terrify you, like secret whose truth would only frighten you. So you closed your eyes and did it all over and over again and hoped you wouldn’t die the next second.

That was Mariah’s flashlight as it guided her down this corridor. Her enemy. Her friend. Kind of like a bubble of light cast by a Jedi against the darkness of a Sith, a bright soul piercing through a black hole, with those shadows like maddened bats trying to gnaw that light right to the bone.

Maybe her flashlight would die. She did not know its battery life. Maybe her light would shine on a face that she did not want to see, a mask that would haunt her dreams for eternity, or a shape that would tease her at the border where the dark circle met the bright circle.

Where, in between those circles so round, right side up met upside down.

“See anything?” Kayden whispered, gripping his crowbar like she gripped her machete.

“Nothing. Except that dead ahead. Looks like a cart or trolley.” It was off white in the light and it looked like something was on it.

“There a difference?”

“Depends on what part of the galaxy you grew up in I guess.”

“Looks like a yellow gurney to me.”

Looked like a bed on wheels the closer they approached, so gurney made sense in a way.

“Wait. Someone’s on it.”

Hell on wheels, maybe.

Kayden raised his free hand before Mariah could even think about taking another step forward.

“No. Not someone.”

Mariah hovered her light over the trolley-gurney.

“Something.”

“A man.”

They stepped closer together.

“A naked man.”

Closer.

“A mannequin?”

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

There was nothing remarkable about this mannequin. To find a mannequin in a factory was as normal as finding bags of popcorn. It all depended on the industry, on the purpose, on the function.

So, whatever Kayden thought when he looked at that plain generic mannequin face, Mariah wondered whether this factory once served the purpose of making dummies and robots. She had earlier seen those animatronics in that video with the Shistavanen, Dogmeat. Then there was the puppet and Puppet Mask himself. Itself?

Whatever had happened between then to this uncanny valley, it was just a theory in the end. Something to ponder on as Mariah and Kayden wandered this valley of handmade shapes; figures that resembled humanoids if not humans, there in the void.

They lined either side of the hallway; some laying on 'gurneys', others laying on the floor, others standing up. Some intact. Some broken. Wear and tear. Or was that intended? They were generic. Expressionless. Motionless. Dead.

Then they began to change.

They took shapes misshapen. One figure was missing its arms as much as its face, as if its brain had grown into its neck, or as if that stump was its head, only melted into its neck. It seemed purposeless if…deliberate.

It just knelt before a door, as if frozen, as if burnt, as if pleading with Mariah and Kayden not to go in. Or, no, as if begging them to go in? Mariah walked right by it, whatever Kayden did. No. Fuck this. Go. Go go go. That mannequin had to have been an accident.

On the other side of the hallway, placed against the wall, was something that might have stood tall. It was instead a crab but, no, not a crab, a figure in the pose of crab. The mannequin made the shape you take when you get on your knees and elbows, only backwards, reversed.

So, no, more the position you assume when you bend your knees with both your hands and your feet on the ground. Somehow it was both positions at once. That was what was uncanny. That’s when Mariah knew this was no accident, but deliberate, if twisted, if purposeless.

This mannequin had legs where legs should be. This mannequin had legs where arms should be. Yet it had no head. It was headless. No, it was not. That’s wrong. Its legs were its head.

None of this mattered, in the end. As nightmarish as it was to witness, they were just mannequins and Mariah wasn’t interested.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here. Now.”

“Don’t need to tell me twice. I don’t even want to explain what I just glimpsed with my eyes.”

Again, Mariah didn’t give a shit. She didn’t want to listen to it. Just wanted to leave it behind and find a new environment. Mannequins didn’t matter to her. Until they did because, the very next moment, she saw movement, heard something metallic, or more like plastic, or more like bowling pins interacting.

And she saw it. Her light shined off it. In hindsight, nothing too unusual under the circumstances. Droids existed. Animatronics. Robotics. Lifelike to whatever extent.

Yet, when Mariah witnessed the mannequins begin to move, to get up from gurneys, to move away from doors, to open up doors, to step toward her and Kayden, she no longer smelled sweat. She smelled death.

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

“RUN! RUUUUN!”

Kayden didn’t need to tell Mariah twice. Her machete didn’t matter. Even if it could hack away into these things, there would be no blood to spill, no bone to break, no life to end. She was already defenseless against these dead threats. But she did successfully defend herself against that undead threat.

No. Run. Go. Don’t even think it. Don’t stop running. Run with him. Run with Kayden. Don’t look left. Don’t look right. Don’t try to fight.

Even as these mannequins closed in, even when they dragged their legs or walked on their hands, even as they began to get so close Mariah might have heard their breath if they had it to begin with.

“C’MERE!” Kayden cried as his crowbar slammed into the mannequin’s face inches away from Mariah's own. She had turned at the right moment, at the wrong moment.

No time to thank him. Another mannequin was upon her the next second. Her machete hacked at its hand as it went to attack her as if to slash with its limb. Mindless violence. That was this environment.

She wouldn’t look. She wouldn’t listen to their clicks. Their clacks. She ran and she didn’t look back. Couldn’t escape into any room. Some doors were open only because of the mannequins coming out of them. Other doors were closed. Would they open? What was behind them anyhow? Mariah did not want to find out.

Corridors. Not doors. Rooms could be dark. Corridors had at least proven to offer some light in the shadows between the dark. A hallway could ultimately end with the exit from this factory anyway.

So, as a door on her right opened, Mariah did not peak inside. She ran. She cracked her machete against a head as Kayden kicked one mannequin into a line of them like bowling pins.

As a door opened on her left, instinct suddenly gripped Mariah because, at the end of the day the fact was that she was human, and bound by mistakes. So, she did not look away. She stole a peek inside the room, wished she didn’t, but in truth movement as much as sound stole her vision as she listened.

She glimpsed a female mannequin in a cage, trapped in the same prison as Mariah and Kayden. Another hung from the ceiling with…something…right beside it. Another one sat atop a different mannequin, a chest of flesh, as if to mount it, like some stallion.

They were moaning. Like stuck in a nightmare with nowhere to go.

It was only a glimpse, a moment but, no it wasn’t, as Kayden suddenly seized Mariah by her arm and stormed into the darkness, dragging her right beside him, swinging his crowbar, shouting at her, and she listened.

“I SAID MOVE! THERE! THOSE TWO! HIT IT!”

She did.

Mariah snapped back into reality, forgot whatever she just witnessed at least for the moment, and swung her machete at her opponent.

The next moment, even as she heard those same moans coming from behind her, and looked behind to see something coming toward her, she didn’t listen. She was frozen all over again.

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC

Maybe that was her worst fear. To feel fear. To be frozen in fear. So terrified you are motionless, like a deer caught in headlights, only there was no light in this tunnel except for flashlights. Mariah’s illuminated the mannequin’s face that came her way, only it was an amalgamation of many mannequins, many faces.

It came toward her like a spider. Like, if the galactic web had sent its minion, had manifested as this faceless thing of many faces, whose mouths were open, eyes soulless, holes, limbs twisted, clicking and scraping, though whose screams were silent.

Kayden. She wanted to scream. She could hardly think as she watched that thing creep.

KAYDEN. She wanted to leap, to flee, to turn away and run, but suddenly she was stuck.

Kayden, if he was near, wasn’t listening, and so Mariah was left all alone with her fear.

Then she heard it.

Singing. Scraping.

-skkkrrrrrrrrnnnGGGGGG!-

Coming from behind her. From where Kayden had been standing.

Slowly, despite the spider suddenly storming toward her, Mariah turned.

And faced Kayden.

As he kicked the head off a mannequin, twirled his crowbar and gazed over her shoulder.

“Get behind me, Mariah,” he breathed steadily. “I’ll delay this freak. You break for it. Agreed?”

-skkkrrrrrrrrnnnGGGGGG!-

Mariah pointed over Kayden’s shoulder.

“Some…thing…coming…Kayden…”

Kayden turned and they glimpsed it.

They witnessed it. The same creature.

Who began to attack the mannequins.

 

[Mariah Boucheron]

Spoiler: Music OOC (Recurring)

Trapped between two foes among a river of enemies, whether mannequin or dead flesh amalgamated with dark spirit, there was no telling what kind of hell Mariah and Kayden had ended up in, but they were thinking the same thing that moment.

Down one end of their hallway, a cerberus, a hydra, a plethora of mannequin limbs and heads stuck together, came bounding toward them. On the other end, a creature with a sword that dragged like a louder version of Puppet Mask’s dagger.

It had some kind of apron. A kind of construction or toolman’s apron. Leathery. But stained. Caked in blood. Its sword was more like a giant knife. Almost a giant’s chef knife. Like he was wearing the wrong apron, and the wrong hat.

His helmet looked like it belonged somewhere in a corner of this factory, in a construction machine, even on a ship, anywhere but on his head. It was triangular. He was Triangular Face. No. He was Pyramid Head.

And wasn’t coming their way. He was too busy attacking the mannequins. The enemies of Mariah and Kayden.

“THIS WAY!”

Kayden roared as they both tore across the floor toward Pyramid Head. Kayden swung his crowbar right. Mariah swung her machete left. Into plastic, plastoid, pallid, decayed porcelain doll faces, grey and cold, of mannequins coming at them.

Heads and limbs, arms and legs, and Mariah did not look behind as she heard a herd of feet and fingers from a twisted fusion of mannequins, stampeding toward them, nearer and nearer like her fear in her ears, as fast as a fathier.

Closer, the monster of many mannequins came, like a spider of many limbs. In the darkness, in the dimness, Mariah did what she did at the doorway—she stole a look, not inside, but behind, and regretted it.

The Arachnid Mannequin crept then crawled then bolted toward him, only feet away. A grotesque contraption of mannequin legs, arms, bodies and heads in red bloody flesh.

In the center of its torso, two arms cradled a head. Closer, it came, then the head opened up, blossomed like a flower, only there was something living in it, like a flower, like a hydra, like a rathar, something, anything, that for some reason was within this amalgamation of mannequins as if in armor.

As the spider’s face opened up to wrap its sharp its teeth around Mariah’s neck, something sang over her head, slashing at the mannequin’s limbs, sending it crashing.

“RUN!”

It wasn't a crowbar or a machete but a sword.

Kayden seized Mariah by the arm and they took off running down the corridor. He didn’t look behind. She did. She watched as Pyramid Head ripped away at Arachnid Mannequin’s arms and legs, as other mannequins hopped on Pyramid Head like raptors on a T-Rex, but she kept running forward, didn’t rest, didn’t stop to catch her breath, didn’t let go of Kayden’s hand, just ran, and didn’t look back.