The Upside Down (Byler)

One-shot

A loud bang filled the earlie silence as a shotgun fired off. No birds flew out from the trees, no form of normal life. In their place you would find a lump of flesh,

just a bit bigger than a decent sized dog. The creature had a stream of blood flowing onto the hard ground, draining from its lifeless body at a rapid rate. The blood

was black.

The teenagers faced scrunched up in disgust as he wiped some of his sleeve.

'Gross' he murmured, already walking away from the creature.

He continued walking, Breathing getting heavier. His feet hurting slightly from his choice of shoes. Doc Martens. Maybe it was not his best choice but, to be fair, it

was meant to be his day off. It was not his fault he liked to dress up. Besides, it was not like anyone else was going to use them any time soon. At least not where he

found himself.

Light humming could be heard as he tracked through the woods and out onto the empty road. Following the road he reached what he liked to call the 'color wall'. It made

sense, where he was there was no color. At least none that screamed 'bright and happy'. The color wall was in town in an alleyway near the movie theatre. The color wall

itself was art he had created in his free time. The most of it was spray painted onto the wall, some painted by hand. Each of them are different sizes and shapes,

representing things from his past. People from his past.

It did not take long to realize no-one was going to find him here, where ever he was, and he had been scared of not remembering what their faces looked like. His family

and friends. Time can do that to you. He had first drawn them in one of his sketchbooks -one he kept in his backpack- about after a year he had stumbled across an

abandoned spray can while exploring the town and brought his drawing to life with color on the wall. He had spent  a lot of time here, too much probably but it had become

a comforting place of sorts. Well as comforting as one place could be when you could be attacked by creatures of all sorts at any time.

The creatures here were another thing altogether. They were slimly and some walked at odd angles and were extremely tall. Some had sharp claw or piercing teeth that

ripped at your skin (he knew from experience) and most let out a screech (or howl) of some kind, each unique to the creature itself. It was terrifying what they could

do. How quick they can kill you. It takes not even a second. He knew because he had seen it before.

There was not many but there had been a few people he had met in this alternate dimension (the upside down). Each of them had not made it longer than a month. He

struggled to figure out what made him so different, so special that he had survived this long. It was more a curse than a blessing. A person would be traumatized for

life after only a week here. It had been three years for him. Nearing four. The days seemed to pass in a blur and you could never really figure out what the time or

date was unless you went seeking for one of those old grandfather clocks. For some reason they seemed to work here, not much else did. It was confusing really but he

was always more focused on surviving.

There had been times where he had given up. Surviving that is. He had brought the knife to his throat but could not bring himself to cut it. He was a coward, he knew.