Finnick’s Treasure Trove

It’s been too long on this elevator. I’ve been hit with balls, sprayed with water, slapped, I’ve had an allergic reaction to something because someone spilled juice on me(which a cat woman had healed. She’s long gone but thank Goodness for her).

I’m being played with like a toy, like a Barbie. Do these things know I’m real?

They certainly don’t treat me, or others I’ve met, like we’re real.

Yet everyone seems used to this. Like it’s fine. How is this fine?

My skin is crawling, the voices are getting louder, and it only enhances the volume of everything around me. The jumping, the screaming, the noises of toys and balls, the sloshing of drinks and the clattering of medkits.

I’ve smelt so many damn flowers I might just lose my sense of SMELL after this.

The last person just left too, and now I’m alone!

This isn’t fine.

It’s not fine.

I’m not fine.

Oh Gods, I’m not fine.

I’m rapidly brought out of my thoughts by the elevator making an abrupt, shaking stop that almost knocks me down, and I grab the railing to steady myself. The elevator lights go out, and the only thing left is an ominous red light pouring from out the bottom of the elevator door.

In a flash, every single player is gone, and I’m left alone in the dark red lighting.

It makes me feel worse.

My breathing becomes shallow, every breath inward feels like I have holes in my lungs not letting me inhale nearly as much, my hands dig under my sleeves and scratch at my arms.

Inhale, exhale.

Not real.

Not real!

Only echoes of screams and laughing can be heard in my mind, as well as the voices enhancing. I can’t hear them, they’re too animalistic, but they’re taunting me I know it-

I crouch onto the ground, trying to catch my breath, feeling the pulse of my heart through my wrist, to remind myself I’m alive.

Minutes feel like torturous hours, and the minute the lights of the elevator flicker back on, it’s like I’m able to breathe.

And then the shadow of black mass smoke materializes into the tight space, as well as the teleportation of one lone player with a dart gun. Where’d the rest of them go? There were so many before.

Once the black smoke mass clears, I see her.

I’m finally, finally acquainted with the woman who’s only taunted me with her voice in my dreams.

She’s tall, ungodly so. She has to be at least three, no four feet taller than me, I could be wrong because she’s hunched over. Her entire body is pitch black, except for her legs, which are animalistic bipedals with red eyes, all over, deep cast in her fur. Out of her head is hair of the same inky black, sleek and spiky, with a white beret on top of the madness. Her face is something that takes me a minute to process, a white ghastly broken mask, and in the cocoon of the brokenness is one lone red eye, with yellow swirls.

It meets me the minute she arrives.

“Normally I’m the one to incite such terror upon creatures. Hmhm, almost makes me feel relieved to see the work has been done for me!” She turns to face me, and tilts her head at me, though her skin is dark, I can see the slightest stretching of her cheeks behind the mask. She’s grinning at me.

“Poor little fairy, so far from home, alone in such a big world they’ve no idea of. You would’ve been better had you just died like you were meant to.” She hisses lowly, “But now because you’ve found such a laughable sense of purpose, you’ve hoped to come on the elevator to what… demand I leave your people alone?”

“Tha…that- that’s exactly what I’m..I’m-I-I’m asking for-“ I can barely muster out the words to her, and she laughs.

“I suppose I will because I’ve already gotten what I’ve wanted.” A claw reaches up to her face and she examines the redness.

The words leave me feeling off.

“What have you done to my-“

“Oh you foolish thing! I’ve done nothing to ‘your’ people.” She scoffs, looking down at me.

“Then what did you do?” I shakily stammer out.

She steps forward once, then a second time, and a third, until she’s hovering over me. She leans her face down uncomfortably into mine.

The silence is deafening, my breath is bated and she’s left me on the seams of anticipation and the hopes she gets out of my face sooner.

But the words she says chill me to the bone.