Nobody is stupid enough to venture into unknown territories, except for Ilya. Don't get him wrong! He never meant to enter that mysterious village.
Fate led him there to save, or be saved.
"Peekaboo!"
Beast is a cruel creature that used to be human...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Beast's facial features changed in front of Ilya's eyes. His jawbone snapped with a shocking sound. His skin and bones started morphing, steadily taking the shape of a maw filled with drooling fangs. His eyebrows thickened along with his stubble brown beard and extended to other parts of his body.
And those irises that were once semi-human, were human no more. Black slit pupils in the center of yellow irises, void of empathy, filled with peek psychopathic joy.
Ilya's breathing picked up, gasping, letting go of quick sharp breaths. His eyes were large, under the influence of a crippling fear. He was small and helpless in his little corner, trapped in front of a wall of muscles and fur.
In the midst of his transformation, Beast roared, "RUUUNNN!"
Ilya crawled away from the cramped space between them, watching Beast's bones and muscles slither under his skin like snakes, reshaping his whole body into a towering werewolf.
It was Ilya's first time witnessing a werewolf transformation. Martha didn't count; she was stuck in her rabid half-wolf half-zombie state. However, that dream Ilya had about Charlie maybe wasn't a dream after all. Maybe Charlie was a werewolf too, seeing the similarities between him and Beast.
Once Ilya was out of Beast's way, he found his strength and scrambled back on his feet, running.
He bolted through the only door in the room and into pale hallways that looked gray, at first. Ilya bumped into them before continuing his sprint, wiping the sheer layer of dust off and revealing blue-painted walls splashed with red spots. Tube lights flickered along the narrow corridors as though on their last breaths.
So many doors to his left and right, all marked with signs and numbers. Some were open, some were closed, and some were broken and shattered by great force. None of them mattered to Ilya except for the door that held the "Exit" sign.
It wasn't that easy to find. This place was huge and built like a maze, with no windows, no stairs, no elevators, and no signs of any escape route. But Ilya kept looking.
The depressing corridors reeked of death. At every corner Ilya sprinted through, he smelled it.
Then Ilya flinched when he heard Beast howling.
"Awooooo!"
Ilya gasped and looked over his shoulder. Not paying attention to what was in front of him, a metal-framed trolley hit him right in the groins.
"Oof—"
Ilya bit his lip to suppress a groan and collapsed on the floor, clutching the painful spot.
The howl stopped, but it still rang in Ilya's ears. Vibrations of Beast's stomping steps traveled via the floors until they were silent. That deadly silence scared Ilya. Now he'd never know which way Beast would come from.
The boy's eyes shifted to that trolley. It fell with a clank, spilling metal objects onto the polished linoleum floor. It was too dark to tell what they were, but then the lights flickered above him, right before a cackling laugh echoed.
Ilya felt the life being sucked out of him when he identified the objects—surgical tools, with dried dark blood on the knives and scissors.
"I can smell you," Beast chanted in a gravelly deep voice.
Beast's voice was closer. Ilya knew he couldn't outrun him.
Battling the pain, Ilya got to his feet and pushed through the first door he could find, closing it behind him. He tried to lock it, but something was wrong. Ilya stepped back and examined the door for a moment.
It had no lock. What kind of door has no lock?
"Shit." Ilya held his head and whispered to himself, "Don't panic, don't panic, don't panic."
On the verge of another panic attack, his lungs rasped for air. Ilya tried to make up for his shallow breathing by breathing faster, resting his hands on his knees.
He closed his eyes and took one deep breath, exhaling it with a sharp gasp.
"Don't panic," he told himself, calmer this time.
There was no time to panic. Ilya regained a bit of his sanity and turned to check the room for a place to hide. There, he saw two hospital beds, old vital signs monitors, and empty bags of blood.
And that answered his question about the missing lock.
This was no factory building. It was a medical facility.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I know it's a short chapter, but I hope you liked it 🙊❤️
Now, MARK YOUR CALENDARS:
New chapters will be published every Friday at 3 PM Eastern Time
