Our Newfound Paradise

A Dark Night

"Good night Alastor," Mercy said from the doorway. She was holding the same lantern she had used the first night they had met. 

"Good night, Mercy," Alastor yawned. They had found him an old pair of pajamas for him to where, and Alastor thought they were really comfy. Mercy slowly closed the door and Alastor tried to shut his eyes. 

He could hardly believe it was only his first day here. Time felt like it was flying by. 

He quietly stared at the window near his bedside. Gleaming moonlight was pouring in. The only sound was the occasional cry of animals from the woods. He found the noises oddly relaxing. He could barely keep his eyes open anymore, so he drifted off into sleep.

That night, he dreamt about the Institute. He was running through the halls, being chased down by a couple of guards in white lab coats. The alarms were blaring in his ears until their screaming drowned out all other noise. 

He was stumbling into the forest. The sound of countless voices surrounded his mind, swallowing him up. Someone was chasing after him. He needed to escape. He needed to get out of here before it was too late. 

He viciously tore through branches and foliage, breaking them apart in the hopes that he could find his safety somewhere beyond its depths. Every time he thought he was about to make it out, he ended up right back where he started. 

There was no way out of this forest. It simply lead on and on forever, always coming back to the spot where it began. 

Alastor thought that was where his dream would end. This was the part where he would wake up and brush everything that he had witnessed. 

As he started to come to his senses again, he started to realize this was not a dream. He was lost deep within the forest with no way out. 

He knew it was too good to be true. Mercy, Grace, and the house, they were all too good to be real. They were the dream. He had probably been wandering the forest for days. Maybe he would wake up and realize it had all been a dream too. He was still sitting in the Institute, taking whatever medicine they gave him to stop the pain. 

Alastor leaned against a tree trunk to steady himself. He started coughing uncontrollably. It was killing his lungs. He had been off his medicine for too long. If he didn't end up going back to the Institute soon, he might end up dying.

Or worse.

A pale green light illuminated the air nearby. Alastor stared at it in wonder. They were dozens of sparks flying into the air with all the liveliness of a fire. He could have sworn by the way they moved that the lights were alive. 

He reached out to touch one of the lights but it quickly vanished the second he tried to. He tried it again to no avail. 

"Hey, get back here!" he shouted in frustration, trying his best to at least catch one of the lights. They taunted him, glimmering in the dark so beautifully and never letting him reach them. 

One of them decided to fly away from him in a wavy line, trying to get away from his reach. "Oh no you don't," Alastor said. 

In one fell swoop, he clapped his hands together over the light. He felt something warm between his hands, so he knew he had finally caught something. 

When he opened his hands to see what he had caught, Alastor froze. His palms were covered in a  sticky black goop that clung to his skin. He was horrified. 

He hadn't caught a light. He had killed it.

This was its blood. 

Alastor yelped and started scrapping his hands off on the nearest tree. The sound echoed through the darkness, echoing back at him in a distorted way. All at once the silent forest seemed to come to life with countless creatures hiding in the darkness.

He could have sworn he saw something gliding along one of the nearest tree trunks with the agility of a snake. It vanished as soon as he tried to get a closer look. 

It sure is dark out here, Alastor thought, trying to be as quiet as possible. There was a sharp crackling sound beneath his feet. He was probably stepping twigs. With the darkness all around him, he could have sworn it was the sound of bones snapping underneath him. 

Evil cackling erupted next to him, making Alastor jump back in terror. The sound was only getting louder and louder. 

"Who's there?" he shouted to the forest. The laughter went dead quiet. Then it started up all over again. 

"S-stop laughing at me," Alastor demanded the voice, taking a step back. The voice was joined by dozens more. Suddenly, he was on a stage, being laughed at by an audience he could neither see nor fight against. 

Stop it, Alastor begged. He put his hands over his ears to drown out the noise. His feet hit the ground powerfully as he did his best to outrun the sounds. 

The deeper into the forest he went, the more strange noises assaulted his ears. There were uncanny shrieks and hisses, followed by the occasional low growl. Most horrifying of all were the quiet pattering of many legs far from view. 

Everything was alive. This whole place was one interconnected cycle of plants and creatures meshing together without rhyme or reason. It was an untamed monster made from countless other monsters, some too deeply hidden to every been seen. 

The further he ran into the forest the more Alastor realized he was hopelessly lost now. This place was endless. Every time he tried to escape, he realized he was only running deeper into the heart of the monster. For all he knew he could have been running in circles. Direction had no meaning. 

He was trapped in an endless cycle, one that always lead back to where it began. Nature was unforgiving. 

Alastor was ready to give up when there was a grotesque cracking sound beneath his feet. At first, he thought it was another branch snapping beneath his foot. When he looked down, he could hardly believe what he saw in the pale moonlight. 

It was a human arm lying limply next to a thorn bush. Rot and decay had already made quick work of it but that was not even the worst part.

The arm's greying skin broke apart like shards of glass beneath Alastor's feet. It broke apart as if it was made of ashes. 

Alastor screamed so loudly it would have woken the dead.

Then he saw something making its way towards him. A pair of glassy green eyes were staring at him from a distance, their light similar to a lantern's. 

The outline of a person appeared behind the trees. It was slowly marching towards him.