Where She Belonged

Deep recesses of the earth can be terrifying-so can the recesses of your mind.

Where She Belonged

          The iron gate creaked in protest as Jazmyn Fisher squeezed through the chain-link barrier, the metal snarling like a warning she chose to ignore. Behind her, the well-traveled paths of Cedar Hollow Park faded into the dusk, their manicured lawns and empty benches giving way to a stretch of overgrown brush and crumbling stonework that the city had cordoned off years ago. "CONDEMNED - DO NOT ENTER," the yellowed signs read, their paint flaking under a patina of grime. But Jazmyn wasn't like others. Rules were for people who didn't see.

          She adjusted the frayed strap of her backpack and stepped forward, boots sinking into damp earth. Her long, dark hair fluttered in the evening breeze, a curtain obscuring her sharp features, eyes that always seemed to look through
things rather than at them. Jazmyn had been sent home from her third-year seminar earlier after abruptly standing to accuse Professor Langley of planting subliminal distress signals in his PowerPoint slides. No one had laughed at first. Then they did. Then the dean was called.

          Alone in the park at the end of the day was Jazmyn's sanctuary. Out here, where silence pressed like a physical weight, she didn't have to pretend. She didn't have to force smiles, modulate her voice, or pretend interest in the trivialities that bound her classmates. Out here, she could let her mind stretch, and the truth could breathe.

          Because Jazmyn knew she was different. Not broken. Not disordered--elevated. She didn't need friends. Friends would only misunderstand. They'd mock her sensitivity, her visions, the way she sometimes knew what someone would say before they opened their mouth. They didn't realize it was power. Superhuman perception. Empathic resonance. She'd tested it--predicted rain before the clouds formed, sensed when a bird would fall from a tree. She could feel energy patterns, the hum of unseen currents beneath the world's surface.

          She just never used it openly. Not yet. The world wasn't ready. They'd label her. Lock her away like they had her mother.

          As twilight deepened into indigo, the air grew thick with the scent of moss and wet stone. Jazmyn followed a narrow trail hidden beneath brambles, past a collapsed stone wall and the skeletal remains of an old boathouse. Then she saw a jagged maw in the hillside, half-hidden behind a tangle of ivy--a mine entrance. Cedar Hollow had once been a mining town, before the soil turned toxic, before the sinkholes began swallowing homes whole. This place had been sealed, forgotten.

          But the cave yawned open, exhaling a breath of stale, mineral-heavy air.

          Jazmyn paused, her pulse not quickening, but thrilling. This wasn't fear. Fear was for ordinary people, tethered to logic and consequence. Jazmyn felt a familiar hum beneath her skin--the kind that always preceded something important. Something only, she could witness.

          Then it came.

          A sound so piercing, so inhuman, that the very earth seemed to shudder. It tore through the silence like a blade through velvet--high, metallic, and endless. A screech that scraped the insides of her skull and vibrated her molars. Birds erupted from treetops in panicked streams. Jazmyn didn't flinch. She tilted her head, listening, her pupils dilating.

          It's calling me.

          To anyone else, it would have been a warning. A cry of pain, or rage. A sound from something wounded, or worse--something that hunted.

          But Jazmyn believed two things with absolute certainty:

          First, that she was protected. Her abilities formed an invisible shield. She could feel the energy around her bending, deflecting harm like water off glass.

          Second, this was a test. A trial meant only for her. The mine, the screech, the isolation--this was initiation. A chance to prove herself, not to the world, but to whatever force had been whispering to her in dreams.

          She stepped into the darkness.

          The tunnel sloped downward, the walls slick with condensation, the floor littered with broken timbers and rusted cart rails. Her phone's weak flashlight barely pierced the gloom, casting long, trembling shadows that danced like specters. She didn't mind. She didn't need light. Her senses were sharper in the dark. She could feel the space around her--the cold press of stone, the subtle vibrations in the earth, the presence deeper inside.

          The screech came again--closer now--echoing through the narrow passage, warping in the acoustics until it sounded like language. Guttural, fragmented syllables. Words are trying to form.

          "..ssss... Jazmyn..."

          She froze.

          No. That wasn't possible.

          But her body didn't believe in the possibility. It felt in resonance. And the voice--distorted though it was--carried a frequency that matched the hum in her chest--the one who had whispered to her since childhood.

          "Who's there?" she called, her voice steady. Not fear, but authority. She projected it like a shield. "I am not afraid of you."

          No answer. Just silence. Then a slow, wet drip... drip... drip from deeper in the tunnel. And breathing. Not human. Not quite. A series of gasping, clicking inhales.

          She moved forward.

          The passage opened into a cavernous chamber; the ceiling lost in shadow. Stalactites hung like fangs. And in the center, crumpled against a mound of rubble, there was something.

          At first, she thought it was a deer--twisted, broken, its limbs too long, its neck bent at a nightmare angle. Then it moved.

          Its skin was gray, mottled with sores that wept a dark fluid. Its eyes--too large, black, and lidless--snapped open and fixed on her. A mouth split vertically down its face unhinged, and from within came a low, guttural growl that swelled into another shriek--this one so close it made her ears bleed.

          Jazmyn staggered--but not from pain. From recognition.

          She'd seen this before. In the dreams. The creature with too many joints, the one that climbed the walls of her subconscious and whispered in numbers and static. It wasn't attacking. It was communicating. And she--because of her gifts--could understand.

          "You're trapped," she said, stepping closer. Her backpack slipped from her shoulder. "I can help you."

          The creature shivered. Its limbs twitched. Then, in a voice that crackled like radio interference, it spoke.

          "...you... feel... like... us..."

          Jazmyn's breath caught. Us? There were more.

          Then the walls moved.

          Shadows detached from the stone. Shapes unfolded--sleek, elongated, their movements unnervingly fluid. They emerged from crevices, from tunnels too small for anything living. Their eyes glowed faintly, pale green. They didn't walk. They flowed, like oil over rock.

          Jazmyn didn't run. She raised her hands, palms outward--a gesture of peace, of dominion.

          "I am not like them," she said, voice steady, resonant. "I am different. I can hear you. I'm like you."

          The creatures paused. One stepped forward, its head tilting, its elongated jaw clicking open. Then, slowly, it reached out a clawed, three-fingered hand.

          Jazmyn reached back.

          Her fingertips brushed cold, rubbery skin--and the world exploded in sensation.

          Images flooded her mind. Not dreams. Memories. Not hers.

          A ship--fallen from the stars, buried beneath this hill. A crew dying slowly, mutating in the planet's toxic crust. Generations of silence. And then--her. Jazmyn. A child screaming in a hospital, her brain firing in patterns that matched their frequency. A beacon. A key.

          They hadn't been calling in pain.

          They'd been calling home.

          And she answered.

          The realization hit her like a physical blow. Her powers weren't imagined. They were inherited. A genetic echo of something ancient, alien. She wasn't broken. She was descended.

          The lead creature let out a low, melodic trill--a sound of recognition, of welcome.

          Then, from behind her, a noise.

          Footsteps. Shouting. Flashlights slicing through the tunnel entrance.

          "JAZMYN! STOP RIGHT THERE!"

          It was campus security. And Officer Kline. They must have tracked her phone.

          Instinctively, Jazmyn turned--just as a beam of light illuminated the chamber.

          The creatures hissed. A chorus of shrieks erupted. They recoiled, not from light, but from the noise--the harsh human voices, the panic, the fear that radiated from the officers like heat.

          "No!" Jazmyn screamed. "You don't understand! They're not--"

          Too late.

          One of the officers fired--just once--a warning shot into the ceiling.

          But the blast echoed like thunder in the confined space.

          The creatures lunged.

          Chaos erupted. In the strobing light, Jazmyn saw claws flash, bodies fall. She heard screams--human ones. And then silence.

          She stood in the gloom, unharmed. Unseen.

          Because when the shooting started, something within her had activated--a power she had never dared use.

          Invisibility.

          She had willed herself unseen. And the world had obeyed.

Now, the chamber is still. The officers lay motionless. The creatures gathered around them, not feeding--but examining. Studying.

          The largest turned toward Jazmyn.

          It didn't see her.

          But it sensed to her.

          It raised a hand, not in threat--but in invitation.

          And Jazmyn, for the first time in her life, didn't feel alone.

          She stepped forward.

          The mine would stay sealed. The world would assume she was dead--another dropout, another tragedy lost to the woods.

          But deep beneath the earth, Jazmyn Fisher finally found where she belonged.

          A soft, steady voice spoke to her, "You have been running, Jazmyn, from the college, from people, from yourself. It is your own anxiety, amplified by the darkness you choose to walk into."

          Jazmyn's eyes stung. She felt tears well up, not from terror but from the raw release of something she could not name. "I... I thought I could be... something else." Her voice cracked. "I thought if I believed I was... special, I could be accepted."

          "You are already special, Jazmyn. Not because you can lift boulders with your mind, but because you see the world with a depth others ignore. You feel the frequencies, the hidden currents, the pain beneath everyday chatter. That is your power. It's not a superpower that dazzles; it's a super‑sense that isolates."

          She looked up, the fluorescent light casting harsh lines across the figure's face, which now seemed oddly familiar--her own, reflected in a cracked, blackened pane of glass that hung on the wall. She realized she was looking at an image of herself, distorted, a mirage of the self she had tried to become.

          "Why did I hear the screech?" she asked, voice trembling.

          "The screech is the echo of a mind that refuses to be silenced. When you enter the mine, you enter your own subconscious, where the darkness is a canvas for your fears. The screech is the world trying to warn you that you are pushing too far, that the line between your imagination and reality is fraying."

Word Count: 1,777
Prompt: You find a large mine and hear a piercing screech within.