Cracked Mask

Chapter 7 - Outside

I closed myself to the corpse and examined it to reassure that it's dad. 'Yeah, it's him.' He was wearing the same outfit from that day he was killed. A crumpled paper fell out from his hand. I picked it up and straightened it.

I expected the paper to be written by dad; his final words or something like that but it was just from The Unknown.

'From The Unknown. Yup, this corpse here is your father. I brought him here yesterday before the whole house was engulfed in flames. And there's one thing you guessed half right. You're in another region OUT of the world. Well I can't explain about the red sky. It is naturally like that. So Rinn, try to figure out the rest of the story ^.^. To Rinn.'

'Yesterday? But he was killed years ago. Wait a minute, so that tall building that stood out was just a lure to get me to the rooftop and the door to the rooftop was a portal that leads to another region and at the same time, to the past. Am I right? I'm not on Earth anymore.'

I crushed the paper and threw it to the side. I got out of the room again and speak of the devil; the gun man appeared as he strolled around. Like what The Unknown said, he's empty-handed.

Somehow, I didn't feel afraid anymore, I felt messed up; everything just seemed so fast.

'Right, it has only been a day, not a week.'

I walked up to him, still holding onto my blade.

"Hey girl, you must be scared and lonely. Come on, let me hel..."

I stabbed him with the blade, on the mask. He didn't expect that coming. He must've thought that I would fall for his trick.

To think that I could easily just stab someone, I must be crazy.

His mask was broken to pieces and he screamed for all his life; dropping to the floor. A few seconds later, he stopped moving. 'What?'

I went near him and pressed my fingers to his neck to check his pulse. Nothing. He's dead. 'How can that be? The previous one didn't die just because his mask came off. Maybe every masked man/woman has their own ways to die.'

I took out the map from my pocket and searched for an elevator to get me to the entrance door.

"Go straight and turn left to find the elevator and pressed the button 'GF' to get to the entrance." I told myself. 

At last, I found it; the entrance door. I departed from the building and out I went.

It was deserted. No signs of living creatures. There were window-smashed cars, corpses, worn-out tall buildings and nothing much. It was like an aftermath of war but lesser corpses. They were found scattered on the ground; limps torn apart. Some were found in their cars. I decided to not care about that and moved onward.

From afar, I could see a person running into a building. That person was kind of wearing a mask with a pattern on it if I was not mistaken.

'Could it be the boy who saved me earlier?'

I ran after him but stopped in front of the building. He might be a trap to lure me in. Just then, I realized that I was stepping on a paper.

'That boy must had dropped it without him knowing but who cares. I'm gonna read it.'

'From The Unknown, if you enter this building, you will be able to reunite with your burnt mother in one of the rooms like how you discovered your father. And that person who entered the building, he's just a pawn of mine, take no notice of him. To Rinn.'

"Mom? What the hell? What's next? My brother is gonna be in some building? Why is this happening to me?" I asked myself and cried.

My vision became blurred and soon all I see was nothing but pitch-black. I lost control of my body, my energy depleted and I fell to the ground.

I fainted.