Creepypastas Volume Eight

Chapter Eight:Ruins Of An Urban Jungle

This is no man’s land blurts your pink, mushy brain.

All around you lay the wastes of civilization. The once mighty skyscrapers have since been humbled, reduced to big clumps of foamy ash, rusted metal frames and sharp microchips. Quietly smoldering orange fires are your only source of light in a world where there is no sun.

You never focus on the ground, uneven and littered with heaps of debris from whatever caused all this. It seems to tug away at every thump and stomp. You don’t know if you’re wearing shoes to protect your soles; you don’t care if you are.

A thought runs into your head- do you really want to see the perpetrator? Do you truly want to be tasked with stopping it, bringing it to justice and to heel? There’s no going back if you see it. Can you say you’re a hero?

Who, no, what are you, anyway?

You’re a squishy animal with no claws, fangs or backup being sent in to stop a city demolisher. Just turn around and know that no matter how painful it might be, how you’ll wonder about what could have happened in this cradle of death will be better than having people wonder what did happen to you.

Sometimes, being a hero is a matter of doing something in a few seconds.

In the particular few seconds before you enter the ruins of a palace your heart-rate jumps, your breathing grows more labored. You faintly realize this, but can you say anything? Perhaps you should take heed of this testament to man’s defeat.

Ahead there lies a dank pipe, its contents drooling out without end above a dumpster, left sitting there and overflowing helplessly. Its position hasn’t changed an inch no matter how much goes into it; you should be able to get up into the pipe, its flow is not too strong. Climbing up a few worn out boxes you quickly slap the lid down onto the dumpster, sit down on it and then grasp a hold of the pipe’s slippery walls, sluggishly sliding on in. The flames’ light cannot reach you in there. You are all alone as you trek through this unlit, cramped and oh-so wet tube.

You stop for a moment as you try to think of why you should continue. All you’d be doing is either ending up trapped somehow or going nowhere. Why should you press on? Yet like a moth drawn to a flame you continue unabated to whatever is at the end. Each splish or clunk makes you nervous, your lizard brain shouting get out.Maybe there’s something listening to you. Did you really make the right choice by venturing into all of this?

But after what seems to be hours you finally stumble out of a broken section, drenched but perfectly intact. Eying your way around, you hear something you hadn’t before- a grinding and scraping noise. It makes itself known, then leaves for a bit, then returning again. Each time it grows farther or closer entirely at random; what this could be remains unknown but your mind works to bring every scenario to life- a man with a sword, a guillotine at work, something being ground to dust. And in each, is it your fragile body that takes the deathblow?

The room you enter while cautiously pursuing this sound is like a sarcophagus. You crouch to avoid hitting what hard rock lies above you. Water continues to rest on the ground; perhaps you’re trudging through a sewer. The room glows a faintly blue from aging paint, fires’ light peeking in through cracks to the surface. Dust haunts the air; it would choke a lesser person. But you’ve come too far to be stopped now.

Lifting up yourself through a manhole, you spot something you’d never dream of: a gigantic box-like object. Protruding from it, however, are numerous appendages; you count six, maybe more but it’s difficult to see them in the darkness. The… thing resembles an insect and you’re not exactly eager to find out why. But you wonder, is this the destroyer? The beast you have sought? Or something else…?