She woke up to a house full of silence and a hastily-made barricade of bedroom furniture that had come slightly lose during the night. The last thing her parents told her was to stay put until they gave the all-clear. That was three days ago and all the snacks she'd hidden were now gone and the water in the sink had gone grey.
Checking her phone one last time (no texts, battery fifteen percent and powerbank...somewhere downstairs) she made up her mind to sneak out and get whatever she could from the kitchen before heading back to her room. Her parents wouldn't ever know she'd left - it sounded perfect.
And it was perfect as she managed to squeeze through the gap between her dresser and the open door frame only to find that there was a thick fog settled halfway up the stairs. Wondering if downstairs was still safe, she threw a sock over the edge of the bannister and watched as the fog seemed to shrink right down, gathering around it like piranhas to fresh blood.
She saw her new strategy - throw things one way and creep the other way until she could reach her destination. Luckily her younger sister's box of marbles had been knocked over and left in the hallway so she had plenty of ammo.
It was a slow method, one that required her to be quieter than whatever she was throwing, one that required her to throw far enough away that she'd be able to see where she was going and one that required her to keep an eye on every inch of her surroundings so the mist wouldn't creep back up on her.
Something about it just didn't seem right. Her dad told her once that all mist is made of is clouds that are low to the ground instead of up in the sky where they should be but this didn't seem like clouds. This seemed more alive, it moved with purpose and moved towards sound, swarming it and hovering like it expected there to be a living thing.
She didn't know what it did to living things until she gently trod on her sister's cold little leg, eyes slowly tracing the scene and finding the rest of her family torn to shreds. Suddenly everything elt unreal and distant like she was looking at herself through someone else's eyes.
Most of the blood was on the floor, soaking her mum's precious beige carpet to a rusty brown. She kept throwing marbles away from her, trying to get a closer look at her family to see if any of them were alive but all she found was a message her mum had scrawled in her dad's blood.
The mist has eyes.
Don't let it know you know.
She began to tremble as a marble rolled towards her.
Checking her phone one last time (no texts, battery fifteen percent and powerbank...somewhere downstairs) she made up her mind to sneak out and get whatever she could from the kitchen before heading back to her room. Her parents wouldn't ever know she'd left - it sounded perfect.
And it was perfect as she managed to squeeze through the gap between her dresser and the open door frame only to find that there was a thick fog settled halfway up the stairs. Wondering if downstairs was still safe, she threw a sock over the edge of the bannister and watched as the fog seemed to shrink right down, gathering around it like piranhas to fresh blood.
She saw her new strategy - throw things one way and creep the other way until she could reach her destination. Luckily her younger sister's box of marbles had been knocked over and left in the hallway so she had plenty of ammo.
It was a slow method, one that required her to be quieter than whatever she was throwing, one that required her to throw far enough away that she'd be able to see where she was going and one that required her to keep an eye on every inch of her surroundings so the mist wouldn't creep back up on her.
Something about it just didn't seem right. Her dad told her once that all mist is made of is clouds that are low to the ground instead of up in the sky where they should be but this didn't seem like clouds. This seemed more alive, it moved with purpose and moved towards sound, swarming it and hovering like it expected there to be a living thing.
She didn't know what it did to living things until she gently trod on her sister's cold little leg, eyes slowly tracing the scene and finding the rest of her family torn to shreds. Suddenly everything elt unreal and distant like she was looking at herself through someone else's eyes.
Most of the blood was on the floor, soaking her mum's precious beige carpet to a rusty brown. She kept throwing marbles away from her, trying to get a closer look at her family to see if any of them were alive but all she found was a message her mum had scrawled in her dad's blood.
The mist has eyes.
Don't let it know you know.
She began to tremble as a marble rolled towards her.
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