Awakening

"This... This doesn't feel right" Megan murmured as she passed through the broken door of her apartment building, and onto the street. Everything was off colored; gone were the bright lights that had little the streets the night before. It felt dim, like something had turned down the hues while she had slept. Even Prie, her beat up yellow Beetle, seemed different. She sat across the street, exactly where Megan had parked her the night before, but looked weathered, unused, as if she had sat there waiting for Megan to return for many rough years.

Megan clicked her key as she approached, nothing happened. She clicked again, still Prie remained unresponsive. She pulled at the door and it refused to budge. Megan pulled again harder, still nothing. Megan then tried unlocking the door but her key wouldn't even slide into the lock. She glanced into the back seat confused. There sat her bag in the back seat, so this was her definitely her car. She tried the door again, pulling harder than before and she was rewarded with a loud clunk that resonated from the door as it cracked open slightly. Megan pulled again and again at the door, yet it refused to yield any further.

Maybe it's stuck?

She tried the door a final time and put everything she could into pulling the door open. Snap! She stumbled back and fell as the handle detached itself from the door.

Megan sat quietly on the ground for a moment, head splitting in pain from the jolt of her landing. After a few moments, the pain subsided to the dull throbbing she had when she had first woke with earlier. She absentmindedly tossed the handle aside, leaving it to bounce across the ground with a clatter. A crash drew Megan's attention to a thin metal pole as the handle knocked it to the ground. She moved over to it and picked it up. It looked like something one would find in a construction area. It was long, thin, and bent at one end. It looked to be covered splattered with a brownish substance just inside of the bend in the metal.

Megan thought little of this and pushed the end of metal through the crack in the door and tried to lever it open. After a few minutes and a lot of tinkering, the door creaked and gave way. Megan quickly reached in a grabbed her bag from the back seat. Still nestled in the old leather lay her camera. After seeing much of her things missing from her apartment she was glad that she had been too tired to grab her bag when she left her car the previous night.

Out of everything, at least this is still safe, her fingers lingering on the camera.

Megan shouldered her bag and began to take in her surroundings. The sun was beginning to dip beneath the horizon to the west. The buildings covered the street in shadow and the alleyways seemed to already have accepted the dark of the night. Much of the glass from their windows were gone or shattered. Long black marks scored the side of the tall buildings, leaving the street even darker and unwelcoming. Everything had that same weathered that Prie had. Ancient building left standing alone with no one to care for them, almost like a long forgotten castle out in the hills. Every single man made light was out, the sign above the bar down the street, the street lights, everything, not even the calming home lights was peeking out from behind a curtain from the many apartments

Even the colors were different, it all seemed to have dimmed and forgotten its beaming pride. Prie's bright yellow shell was so dull it could barely be seen at all. It now sported sickly yellow that reminded Megan of pictures she had seen of Chernobyl.

The pavement beneath her feet was cracked and plants had reached through in many places. The pavement was so old, so worn, it couldn't be the same pavement she walked across every day.

A door stood ajar nearby, just behind where she had fallen earlier. It was the door that led into Hannah's apartment building. Megan had to know what had happened to everything overnight, and if anyone could have an answer about strange things happening overnight, it would definitely be Hannah. She walked briskly through the door and went straight up the stairs to Hannah's apartment. More dulled colors and scorch marks greeted Megan as she moved down the hall. This too looked as if it had seen the same hell that
had marched through outside. Hannah's door stood in its place, slightly ajar.

That's odd. Hannah never leaves her door open. I doubt that's a good sign.

Megan pushed open the door and entered the room. Inside a few things had changed since she had been there last. Attached to the door was a large metal bar that could lock the door into place when it was closed. It didn't look like much would be able to get through without bringing the door and part of the wall down too. Curiously, this huge metal bar was bent ever so slightly.

A thick layer of dust covered the entire room. It looked like no one had been here in a very long time. Megan quickly searched through the apartment looking for any sign of Hannah. She wasn't able to find any sign of her friend anywhere throughout the apartment. The only thing of note that stood out to her was that Hannah's bag was missing from its usual place on the wall. The most likely cause was that she had left with it and headed for somewhere.

The college perhaps?

Megan moved through the apartment till she came upon a large bookshelf standing quietly in a corner. She ran her finger down the spines of a few of top ones. January 2014-June 2014, July 2014-November 2015, December 2015-April 2016. They were Hannah's journals. Hannah had always spent time writing down her thoughts at the end of the day when she could, especially when she had had a thought that really intrigued her or one of her experiments had gone in a new direction. Hannah and Megan had spent many nights sitting and pondering the coming days.

Megan turned away lost in thought, remembering a talk she had had a week previously about the workings of tesla coils and an idea she had that could half the size of the equipment needed to make it work. She followed the memory of Hannah to a nearby desk covered in papers. In the center of the desk sat a detailed depiction of a tesla coil that Hannah had drawn during the talk.
Megan picked up the now yellowed paper and examined it. The lines had faded and the paper itself was brittle to the touch. Small writing had been scrawled into the corner of the paper that hadn't been through we Megan had seen it last.

Officer Dan Howard

206 208-5397

Megan

Megan could immediately tell something had been troubling her friend when she had written this down. The uncharacteristic slant in the writing only showed up when Hannah was deeply trouble and needed to put down information very quickly.

I wonder what happened. And what it had to do with me? She seemed fine at the bar.

Megan dug into her bag in search of her phone. After a few seconds of shifting around the contents, she found it hiding underneath her journal and plucked it out. The home button gave an audible click as she tried to use the phone but it remained dark.

Must have died last night.

She turned and walked over to the outlet where Hannah always kept her phone charger and plugged her phone in. She tried to restart the phone to no avail. She tried moving the charge to another outlet across the room, but still no luck. Abandoning the charger and stuffing her phone back into her bag, she went over to the light switch and flipped it. Unsurprisingly, the light also remained off.

Guess I'll just have to find her on my own and get her to tell me what all this is about.

Returning to the desk, retrieved and flipped open her journal to jot down the officer's number. The pages had gained the same aged an aged appearance to them that everything else. Megan carefully copy down the message into the journal and returned it to her bag perplexed.

Megan walked back outside and tried to start her car, but it didn't even stutter. Megan fell back against the seat with a sigh. She didn't know enough about cars to even begin to figure out what was wrong with Prie.

Looks like I'm walking. I bet Hannah is still in the library.

She tried to slam the door closed as she left and she was, again unsurprisingly, not successful. The door wouldn't close past the crack she managed to rip open earlier. Upon closer examination, she saw that the innards of the door had rusted heavily and part of the frame was bent.

She left Prie behind with her door still cracked. There wasn't anything that Megan could do about it now, best to find Hannah and figure out what was going on. She walked away down the street. As she walked the sun disappeared behind the horizon. With all the lights out in on the street she walked with only the moon to guide her steps.

Even in the pale light of the moon she could see that the city was looked far worse than her home block. Buildings were crumbling and thick vines had climbed up the side reaching up to the 12th floor in some places. One building's face had completely fallen away and blocked the street she was walking along. Megan walked up to it and ran her hand over the fallen rubble. Grasses and moss clung to the concrete and in places covered it so fully that the mound of rubble began to resemble a great hill in the middle of the street. She detoured down another street trying to find a way around the rubble. It was awhile before she came across the Green Way Park. It was long over grown and the trees had force their way past the gates that surrounded the park. A great tree had grown massive in the middle of an intersection and had ripped up much of the concrete there as its roots spread across the ground.

Megan wandered up to the great tree and ran her hand across its trunk. It looked like it had stood there for ages and was so wide its trunk itself took up at least three-fourths of the intersection. Now she could see that not only had the roots of the tree ripped up parts of the intersection, but parts of the sidewalk and moved on into the nearby buildings. She looked at the trunk of the massive tree in wonderment. It was impossible that a tree like this had just grown up overnight.

Something out of the bio labs gone wrong? But how would it have gotten here. Someone had to have been watching it? Right?

She continued on until she found the gates that open upon the park. That tall gates that guarded the entrance to the park were, like much of the rest of the city, aged and broken. Part of it had fallen from its hinges and onto the ground. It lay pushed against the side of the nearby wall. The other side of the gate was just as overgrown as the fencing and didn't look like it couldn't be moved at all.

Megan stepped back and pulled her camera from her bag. She tried to snap a picture of the broken gates but her camera didn't take the picture. She popped open the back and checked the film she had left in it. It was old and it looked like the internal battery had died.

Are you kidding me? This is a brand new pack!

She reclosed the camera and stored it back in her pack. Another problem that she would have to worry about later. Before stepping through the gate Megan look back at the great tree that had taken over the intersection behind her. Above it hung an almost full moon, another thing that didn't add up, the previous night was a new moon. After a moment she moved through the gate and into the overgrown park. It looked far more like a forest than the park she had once lived by and it made her a bit uncomfortable, but as far as she knew it was the only other way she knew that lead directly to the library that wasn't block by rubble. Hopefully.

There was a small path that lead into the wood, probably the remains of the sidewalk that once twisted through the park. She moved onto the path and on deeper into the park. As the trees slowly slipped by, Megan began to the silence that surrounded her started to become a very tangible being. It filled the world around her and slunk through the tree branches above her. Shuddering as a cold breeze whipped through the wood and pierce through her sweater, Megan walked on into the dark.

The trees grew tighter together as she continued, growing ever thicker and roots began to tangle together under her feet. Before long the path disappeared and Megan had nothing but the dim haze of the moon that something breached through the upper branches and onto the forest floor. The trees surrounding her where bigger than any she had ever seen before, including the one she saw before entering the park. Each one had to be at least 50 feet in diameter and grew only about 10 feet apart from each other. What was left of the ground was simply a massive tangle of roots. As she walked, an uneasiness began to envelope her. It was the kind of uneasiness that one felt after watch a horror film alone in the dark, the feeling that you were being watched.

Megan tightened her hold on the strap of her bag and picked her way the roots with a new found haste. The silence continued to press in on her from all sides, her scraping of her shoes becoming gunshots in the night. Her foot slipped off one of the roots and she was forced to stop and regain her balance. The sound of her shuffling however didn't stop. The shuffling sound she was now hearing was coming from directly behind her and stopped short once she turned around to look for the source of the noise. Something was definitely behind her. Megan leapt from the root she was standing on and moved swiftly along, beginning to tighten the straps on her bag as she went. She quickly found that moving quickly on the roots without her hands to balance her and keep her from slamming into the tree trunks was going to be an almost impossible task.

She released her hold on her bag, letting it bounce against her backside as she sped along a root. The shuffling noise had increased its speed to keep up with it and it was almost certainly gaining on her. Of to her side Megan saw the trees slightly thin out and the moon lit more of the ground. She hurdled to the side a made a beeline to what she could now see was a large clearing.
A loud snap sounded behind Megan as she broke free of the trees into the clearing. Swirling around and retreating farther into the opening, her eyes darted from tree to tree as a scanned for the source of the sound. It was too dark for her to see very deep into the dense woods but if something moved into the clearing she would see it before it reached her.

What I wouldn't give for one of my night lenses.

Megan finished tightening the strap on her bag so that it wouldn't bounce around as much if she needed to run again. The silence of the night started to press in on her again as she strained her ears for any signs of movement in the trees. Whatever was behind her when she came out of the wood couldn't have been more than a foot or two behind her. Megan continued to scan the trees, her heat beating rapidly in her chest.

Soft voices broke the silence of the night; almost a whisper creeping out of the woods. "Trokotem ahloke, slikhe lotehs. Leuwbokm os lither sheketne. Uryld wuths lodo?"

"Kobuit doksiar mesheid, notesloke t'olnt w'din," a second deeper voice responded.

"Habonhbak gerbset hacuas. Casotidin hden heouhsd mehlvinre tghen edhe!"

A figure broke from the cover of the dark off to Megan's right. It looked like a man but it was too tall and it's glowed a soft blue in the moonlight. It eyes were about double the usual size a piercing blue and grey hair lay flat against its head and torso. Its long thin arms ended in fingers that likely extended about double the length of an average human and tapered off into sharp looking claws. It approached cautiously, eyes never leaving Megan's bag as it approached.

"You.... Lo'g.... 'ome.... Godling." The deep voice strained.

Megan tried to respond, but her voice caught in her throat. Every nerve in her body was screaming for her to run. The thing standing before her was not human yet it still managed to speak in a way she at least somewhat understood. Tonight, so far, hadn't exactly gone along the stand path that he life tended to follow, and she had the itching feeling that her night didn't intend to get itself back on track anytime soon. She took a tentative step back and this creature came closer.

What happened next occurred in just a furry of motion, Megan barely caught all of it before she turned and across the clearing away from the creature. The creature began to lunge at her when an inhuman wail erupted from the woods from where Megan had entered the clearing. It spun in the air to look in the direction of the wailing just in time to see a huge furry creature burst from the trees and make a beeline for it. Before either Megan or the creature could response, the furry beast bit down on the chest of the creature, it's mouth covering almost all of the upper torso of the creature and began shaking it viciously. Megan spun on the spot and dashed into the woods.

FUUUUUUUCK MY LIFE. WHY IS EVERYTHING SO FRICKEN BIG ALL OF A SUDDEN!

She ran over the roots, not caring exactly where it was that she was going. Just hoping that it was far away from what ever had been in that clearing. She fled through the forest until her foot caught on one of the roots and she was thrown into a painful mess at the foot of one of the trees.

She pulled herself onto her knees, and ankle throbbing in pain. The silence had returned to the forest and she could hear nothing around her with the exception of her panting breath. Seconds turned into minutes as she knelt on the forest floor. Her senses pick up everything around her. The rough bark of the roots digging into her knees, the smell of her sweat as it trickled down her face, and the oppressive silence that surrounded her.

The feeling of a second presence began to creep back into her mind. It was much slowly than it had been before, as if whatever was there was afraid of her. Scared of letting its presence know.

Megan focused in on the sense, searching for anything kind of tangible evidence for its presence. There was definitely something around her in the dark. Its breath was soft on the air, barely tangible from the wind yet still it began to echo in her mind after see took note of it. The breathing was coming from just behind one of the larger roots.

Slowly rising to her feet, Megan prepared to take off into the trees again. Her ankle was still throbbing from her fall, but as adrenaline began surging through her system again, the pain faded. Her body tensed as the breathing was joined by the soft patter of feet on the roots.

A small white furry head popped out from behind a root where Megan had heard the breathing coming from. It perched itself on top of the root a stared down to where Megan stood at the base of the tree. It looked to be some kind of fox, but was barely larger than a cat and its coat was a blazing white color.

New sensations flooded Megan as this small foxes held her gaze. Gone where the smell of the forest and her sweat, and in its place the smell of freshly printed books and a hint of lilac perfume. Warmth that could only be attributed to a good cup of coco in the winter radiated through her chest and memories started surging forward. All memories linking back to Hannah.

Megan faltered slightly at the onslaught on sensations and stumbled back slightly breaking eye contact with the fox. All of the memories and sensations vanished from her mind as soon as it happened and all the pains and smells of the night returned sharper than they were before. She looked back up at the fox and it made a quick motion with its snout and turned around disappearing back over the root. Megan stood perplexed and didn't move.

It returned over the root a few seconds later and its face contorted into what Megan could only describe as mild annoyance, though how a fox could suddenly portray human emotion that well she had no idea. It made the same quick motion again, gesturing behind it, and stared again at Megan.

I'm almost certain that that fox is telling me that it wants me to follow it... eh, why not? It's not like this night can get any weirder.

She climbed up the roots up to the where the fox was standing and followed it as it jumped over the roots deeper into the forest. The dark swallowed them whole as the moon disappeared again behind the trees above them.