beyondbecks

[beyondbecks]

Disclaimer; this is kinda gory. It’s also lowkey lazy and heavily unfinished. I hope you enjoy regardless!

Cold floor. The smell of blood. Darkness. Panic. Life. Sneeg took a shaky breath in as his body restarted. He tried to sit up but was greeted with a fiery pain in his leg. His heart filled with dread. He didn’t know how or why he’d survived but it most likely wouldn’t stay that way for long. He gently tapped his head against the floor beneath him, psyching himself up for the pain that would soon wrack his entire body. After a weighty pause, he bit the bullet and his lip and forced himself into a sitting position. Crying out in pain he hunched forward biting his finger, not knowing if that thing could hear him. After a moment, he opened his eyes and looked down at his right leg.

It was horrific. His knee, bent towards the left, pointing at almost a 90-degree angle towards the exit he almost made it to. It was heavily bleeding. His heart jumped and hit his brain as it pounded faster and louder the longer he stared. Despite this, something deep in his brain breathed,

“Survive.”

Almost robotically Sneeg began assessing the area around him. He saw a yellow wire, covered in blood not too far away from him.

“Stop the bleeding.”

With a wince and a slight pause halfway through leaning over, Sneeg wrapped his hands around the small wire and brought it over towards his leg. Muttering curses, he somehow wound the wire under his thigh, moving it to the thickest part. He crossed the wires, moving one underneath the other, and pulled as tightly as he could, using his teeth to hold the makeshift tourniquet in place as he looped another knot. He sighed, leaning back on his hands for a moment, closing his eyes. Willing the pain to go away, gritting his teeth as his leg slowly went numb. He opened his eyes, looking around for anything to help him move.

He glanced up at the exit sign flickering above him. All he’d have to do would be to stand and leave. Sneeg once again looked around the small area. He looked towards the rest of the desolate mall, where he assumed that the monster had fled. Looking a little closer he noticed a mall directory, or what was left of it, (shattered and mangled as if a semi had barreled through it) about 15 to 20 feet away.

Breathing deeply, he squeezed his eyes shut and began pulling himself towards the rubble, using his arms and good leg to slide across the ground, stopping every few feet to punch the ground and bite his lip as the pain pulsed throughout his leg and back, when he was finally amongst the shattered map pieces he laid down, catching his breath.

What felt like an eternity passed and finally, Sneeg sat up again, looking around the debris. After a few minutes, he found two long, almost straight pieces of metal and more wire pieces.

“Ah dammit.” He said breathlessly, looking at his leg, which had been dragged almost back into place. Gritting his teeth and looking at the ceiling, he wrapped his hand around his calf, just below where he believed the break to be, and moved it back into place. Halfway through the movement, he let his leg go and covered his mouth, biting his hand to keep from screaming

“Oh, my god.” He swallowed as bile crawled its way up his throat and tears scratched their way into his eyes.

Reassuring himself, Sneeg muttered, “It’s like a bandaid, It’s like a bandaid. C’mon. C’mon! Come ON!” and he pushed the bone back in place, a slight crunch and an immense pain roared through his body.

His hands were trembling and he was steadily feeling more and more dizzy. He closed his eyes and swallowed, begging the room to stop spinning. At least the worst was over, he hoped. He slowly opened his eyes and grabbed another wire piece, looping it under his leg, near the original “tourniquet”. Painstakingly, Sneeg moved the two metal pieces to the sides of his leg and tried his best to splint it. Once he’d stabilized his leg to the best of his ability, he psyched himself up for the next task. Standing. With a small scream, he pushed himself onto his feet, putting most of his weight onto his good leg. He began to hobble towards the door, the red exit light illuminating the small trail of blood that led from where he woke up, to where he set his leg. He leaned against the metal door, breathing hard, using the door frame to hold himself up for a moment. He reached out toward the handle and almost pushed it in, he was practically free!

“RANBOO!” The rest of the sentence was unintelligible, but something about the voice froze Sneeg in his tracks. His hand was hovering over the doorknob when suddenly, he remembered something. The sensation of remembering was new, unknown to him, yet there was a familiar tug at the corner of his heart when the memory flooded back. He could almost feel the wooden porch beneath his feet.

His eyes were unfocused, and all at once he felt himself get lost in a dream-like state. He was smaller, his leg was fine, and his feet were bare, hanging from a wooden porch swing. There was a gentle hand in his hair, and when he looked over he saw an old woman with kind eyes, looking back at him. He had no idea who she was, but his heart swelled and he felt safe. The feeling of being loved was almost palpable. The old woman reached out a wrinkled hand, calloused with time, but soft and loving, and held his face.

“Ranboo!” That voice again, but it sounded higher, younger. Sneeg turned his head to look out from the porch swing. He was sitting on a wrap-around porch, the old woman gently pushing the swing back and forth. Through the pillars holding up the awning Sneeg saw a child with short dirty blonde hair. His eyebrows were knit together and his glasses were entirely too big for his small, round face. He was looking up into a tree, face full of worry. “Ranboo! Get down! You might fall!” Again, the feeling of knowing, and even more profound, being known filled Sneeg when he looked at the other boy.

“Charlie I’m fine! See?” Sneeg remembered walking over to the other boy, he remembered looking up into the tree and seeing a third little kid. His hair was long enough that it had been pulled into a small hair tie, they were missing two front teeth, and he was perched in the branches of the tree, looking down on the two of them with a smile. Sneeg watched through his younger self’s eyes as the boy in the tree- Ranboo- swung down, holding himself upside-down by their legs.

He heard Charlie gasp and felt a little hand grab onto his sweater sleeve. Memories flooded back into his brain, small memories, sitting in front of a glowing tree, the smell of gingerbread, the old woman as she tucked him into a soft bed, looking over to see the sleeping forms of Charlie and Ranboo. Snippets of a life he knew was his broke through the wall in his brain. He gasped, and opened his eyes, breath coming out quick and heavy. He gripped his chest and the door frame as he caught his breath. The realization hit him like a truck.

“Charlie.” He breathed. Filled with adrenaline and determination Sneeg pushed himself off the wall and hobbled as fast as he could in the direction of the voice. His heart pounded in his ears as he strained to hear anything else. Screaming. He heard screaming. He moved faster, stumbling around corners, almost falling as he tried to fight his way to the noise. When it sounded its loudest, silence. A scream was cut off, and there was only silence. He swallowed the dread and panic that was welling up in his chest. He stopped in front of a door, breathless as his hand moved toward the handle. He gently pushed the door open, ungracefully walking through the door, slowly moving through the dim light.

What he saw made his heart stop. A large room full of people, all just stuck in their tracks. Each and every one of them had a white mask obscuring their faces, a strange symbol that made Sneeg’s heart drop on each of them. Some were frozen mid-run, and every one of them just stuck in time. A large set piece stood silently in the middle. As he moved closer he saw a cabin, one he’d seen before, he gasped as he took in the cage. He remembered that cage, he remembered this place, but it felt distant, foggy, and unreachable. A rustling sound made him slowly move to the floor, hiding behind some sort of camera rig. He sat with his back to it, breathing heavily, and slowly, he peeked around his hiding place to see the source of the noise.

Sneeg held his hand over his mouth to keep from screaming. Not even 15 feet away, a great beast of wire and blood stood over a human-shaped figure. There was a large puddle of blood underneath the two, so dark it looked like a hole had opened up in the earth to swallow the creature and its prey. Its head was an old television, static glitching and sparking across the screen as it tore into whoever was underneath it. With a pang of fear and one more peek, Sneeg realized the figure underneath it wasn’t just an unlucky masked body, it was Charlie. Lying underneath the monster, painfully still. His arm covered his face, blood covering the rest of him. He had some sort of tactical vest on and his chest had been clawed open. Sneeg stared, stuck in a horrified trance, hoping his beating heart didn’t alert the creature as it studied the damage it had caused. What seemed like a million eternities passed and the monster seemed to grow bored. Sneeg watched as it crawled away, counting to 200 once it had left his field of vision. When his countdown finished, he painfully scrambled over to his brother.

“Nononono. Please, c’mon, please wake up. Please.” He moved Charlie’s arm out of his face, swallowing the heave that came up when he saw Charlie’s bloodied face. He shook Charlie for a little longer before dropping his head onto his bloody stomach, sobbing. He didn’t know how long he stayed there when he felt Charlie’s stomach move. There was a cough and Sneeg shot up, looking into Charlie’s face.

“Charlie?” Sneeg whispered, terrified that he was dreaming. He yanked off his hoodie, and gently moved Charlie’s glasses off his face, trying to wipe away the blood covering his eyes. Charlie’s left eye fluttered open and a labored voice came out.

“S-Sneeg?” He coughed, blinking as tears welled up to clean the blood out of his eyes. “W-what are y-you doing here? I thought…” Charlie tried to sit up, wincing. Sneeg gently pushed him back towards the floor.

“Listen, I don’t know how you’re alive right now, but I’d like to keep it that way,” Sneeg said, trying to wrap his hoodie around the wound he thought was generating the most blood loss. Charlie was covered in gashes, the biggest of which cut across his torso, starting from the side of his stomach, all the way up to his left shoulder. His arms and legs were covered in scratches from where the monster had torn into him. As Sneeg tied the hoodie across Charlie’s chest, Charlie rested his head on the ground beneath him. They were silent for a moment, before Charlie spoke again, sounding a little stronger.

“Something isn’t right.” He said Sneeg helped him sit, leaning him against a nearby chair.

“What gave you that impression?” Sarcasm creeps past the worry in Sneeg’s voice.

“I’m not sure… I can feel it in my gut.” Charlie’s face had twisted into a mischievous smile. Sneeg let out a laugh of disbelief.

“You can’t be serious. You are bleeding out, and you’re still making stupid jokes?” Sneeg felt the twinge of memory in the back of his mind. Something felt normal about Charlie making bad jokes, no matter the situation.

“I’m sorry- the need to make jokes is rooted in my innard parts.” Charlie laughed, or rather, coughed, in what sounded like a laugh. Sneeg laughed again, allowing the absurdity to pull him out of his worry for a second. Horror filled his face again as what started out as a weak version of Charlie’s laugh, morphed into a hacking cough. Sneeg held Charlie’s back as he coughed and coughed, watching with fear written on his face as blood and some sort of green goo came up and out of his lungs.

A/N: this is all I have for now! Thanks for reading :)