In the Land of The Damned

Desperation and Agony

His stomach growls become audible over the sound of the rain pouring down against his clothes. Tobias grunts at this unpleasantry. 

The sound of the thunder, however, pierces through both of the other sounds.  

A streak of lighting off the distance over the hills becomes visible. 

Tobias sighs in utter exhaustion, he screams in agony at, not only his situation, but also at himself now. 

Hopelessness begins to fill him as he realizes the reality of his situation: alone, lost, hungry and unprepared for the elements, he feels like a lost cause. Despite having thought that everybody else was an idiot for a majority of his life, now for the first time, he realizes that maybe he himself was an idiot as well. That he wasn't actually any better than any of the other idiots. He was just as hopeless and pathetic as his mother and every other idiot in the world, who couldn't figure out/remember how to operate an oven.

 The hopelessness, self loathing, doubt and depression fused inside of him, becoming a black hole in his mind, that was as dark as the sky above him had become. 

He screams out profanity as he hopelessly continues to trudge on through the wet, sloppy slopes of the never-ending hills. 

The tears that emerged from his tear ducts quickly merged and vanished into the rain that poured down his face. His tears were nothing more than a symbol of what he had become, just an individual that had become stupid and merged with the rest of civilization. 

I should just end myself now, he thinks and concludes. 

Bring an end to this torture, there is no point in continuing on, everything was headed downhill anyways, why not skip to the end. 

But as he thought more and more about this he realized that he didn't have anything that he could kill himself with. Unless he wanted to end his life at the hands of the book, the only thing he loved that was left in this world, the thing that had propelled him to set out on this crazy journey, but then it occurs to him that maybe it hadn't been the book alone? That maybe he had always wanted to leave!

He cries out again as the hopelessness turned into despair at the revelations that he began to make. 

 Reaching the top of yet another crest, Tobias leans back and opens his mouth, letting a breath of air escape his lungs. He closes his eye and feels the rain pour down his face, some going into his mouth. 

Just then there is another flash of lightning, only this one seems to engulf him. The bolt hit just a few feet next to him, however, the force of it hitting the ground sends him flying and tumbling off to the side of the hill. 

For a second he thought he was going to roll down the hill, but the bulge of his backpack stops him. His heart racing, as he realizes what had just happened. If he had been just a few feet to the side, he would have been hit directly by the lightning. Tobias, breathing heavily, gets back up to his feet, wobbling as he does. His legs shake as he stumbles back over to where he had been standing, and finds a black ditch next to it. He looks up to the sky to question, 

Why hadn't that hit him?

He looks back down and spots something he hadn't noticed before.

At the bottom of the hill was the remains of a one story building, that looked like it had been hit by missiles, for it had large portions of the walls missing. The walls of the foundation had been stripped of any paint and simply had the gray color of concrete. 

Looking at it closer, as he began to descend the hill, Tobias thought that at one point it might've been a bar. The dirt underneath his feet suddenly gives and he finds himself in an uncontrolled slide down the rest of the hill, almost like a moving floor, then he stops just outside the rubble of the building. 

Tobias stepped carefully into the perimeter of the foundation, thinking that this might be private property. He also moved with caution, for he was still spooked from the scare with the chainsaw man, and the thought that he might've lived here with God knows what else! Not to mention the creatures that had been following him in the shadows of the woods.

Lightning strikes again, causing Tobias to jump into the building's foundation. Heart still beating fast, Tobias does a full 360, checking to make sure  there was nobody watching him. 

After doing so and finding that he was conclusively alone, he throws his bag off to the side and collapses to the dirt. His heart pounds in his chest as he lies on the dirt floor of the destroyed building, looking up at the broken roof above. 

Feeling safe now that he had a shelter to rest in for the night, Tobias allows himself to relax, closing his eyes. But before he could fully close his eyes the sound of sticks crunching came from somewhere behind his head. 

Tobias bolts up and looks in the direction the noise had come from. The sound had come from the far corner of the building, the corner had a bit of wall connected to it on the left, that had a clear glass window. 

The sound came again, only this time it was multiplied exponentially. The sounds became rustling, Tobias holds his breath, frozen in fear at what might reveal itself at any minute now.

 Maybe at long last the hidden thing that had been stalking him was going to reveal itself!

But Tobias didn't want to see it, he wasn't ready for another challenge, he had had enough scares for one day and just wanted to rest. His entire body hurt and was exhausted from all the walking and heart racing events of the day. 

As his eyes moved back and forth between the exposed side of the corner and the window wall side, the sound of the rustling became louder and seemed to surround the building.

 And then he saw it.