Chapter 8 - I Like Listening to the Echos

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You stopped at the old café for a short minute to get a snack and some coffee, and then you went on your way towards the abandoned mall. In your head, you ran through everything you needed to do for school.

You had to finish that project for English, along with a short essay. You had vocabulary work for your foreign language class. Was there anything else? No, not that you were aware of now. The real trouble would be that English project.

Oh well. You had time. There wasn't too much of a rush.

You pulled into the empty parking lot and parked. Once you'd switched off the engine and grabbed your things, you made your way towards the decrepit building.

You swung open the door, and a plume of stale air and dust flung at you. The hinges squealed desperately, as if scolding your intrusion onto the sacred grounds. Your feet thudded against the concrete floors, causing a harsh echo to jump its way through the building.

The scent of dust and age filled your nose. Light streamed into the building through an opening in the ceiling in the main atrium. At one point, you vaguely recalled, there had been a large window that filled the skylight. Years ago, however, a branch fell down and hit it, causing it to shatter into a million little pieces.

That was the reason everyone left. A good thirty people were injured due to the sheer size of the skylight that fell. No one came back after that. They didn't waste their time cleaning up the glass, and now as you walked into the atrium, your feet crunched over it.

A soft pitter-patter hit the roof as rain began to fall. It sprinkled into the building. You could smell the warm humidity as water dripped down into the room. It clinked against the old glass. The soft light made the shards shimmer and sparkle.

It was beautiful.

The pitter-patter echoed through the building along with your crunching steps over the sparkling shard of glass. A small shiver ran up and down your spine as a cool breeze blew into the building. You entered one of the old abandoned shops and looked around for a place to sit.

The displays were still out from the day everyone ran away. No one had ever bothered to pick up their stuff or anything. It wasn't safe.

It amazed you how the building remained so untouched. There was no graffiti, no vandalism. The only windows that were broken were broken by nature, not by man.

The store was an old café. Food had rotted away in its display cases many years ago, and now nothing of it truly remained. The wooden chairs and tables were water damaged, and their upholstery was torn and rotted. Everything was old and mother nature did the slow work of eating away at it and reclaiming her resources.

You decided to sit just outside the café on one of the concrete benches built into the walls.

It was nice. Peaceful.

You pulled out your phone and unplugged your headphones, then pulled open your music and pressed shuffle on a playlist.

The music rippled through the building in layers, making it feel even more empty and abandoned than before. The rain began to pick up, turning the pitter-patter from before into more of a thudding. The concrete ground began to soak as the water flowed across it at a slow, crawling pace.

You lifted your head from your homework and breathed the humid air. You didn't feel like working right now.

You slid the binder away into your backpack and laid down flat on your back. The cool concrete let the back pain you'd accumulated throughout the day flow away with the rain drops. You hummed along with whatever was playing.

Your head, for the first time the whole weekend, was clear. You weren't stressed. You weren't anxiety-ridden. You weren't depressed. You were... relieved. Happy.

Comfortable.

You felt your eyelids begin to droop, and your eyes began to sting with exhaustion. You hadn't slept well since the other night. It had only been two days, sure, but you were exhausted. It was all so stressful. Maybe you could just take this one little break.

Yeah.

That would be okay.

It was okay to rest.

The echo lulled you off to dreamland. Everything was alright. You'd be okay. Everything would be okay.

This was peace.

[Words: 742]

A BLOODY GOOD TIME // Creepypasta x Fem. ReaderWhere stories live. Discover now