Spicy Spence

You weren’t having a very good day. Not like any day could be considered ‘good’ since entering this hell hole. But this particular day was a bit atrocious due to the screaming. Someone new must have entered Level 0 and it had found them. You had done a pretty good job at avoiding that new thing ever since it spawned from wherever they came from but you still caught glimpses and well, smells from its lair.

So you shouldered the backpack and went towards the lair’s location. Don’t let anyone say you weren’t a nice person. Plus it would mean company that wasn’t an ominous sound or the hazmat suits. That is if the thing has decided not to eat the survivors yet.

“People really have to go about messing with things huh?” You muttered out loud as you saw the couch, the ramp and the remains of a rope lying in the entrance. You picked your way over the furniture and slid down quickly. Landing on the damp carpet.

It was the smell that hit you first. You always hated coming down here, it made you want to gag up the small amount of food you had managed to force down your throat that morning.

“Fuck, eww, okay focus.” You picked yourself off the floor and headed towards the horizontal door, you didn’t like heading off through the different areas of this section. Just in and out. Rescue mission, okay. Like this wasn’t going to get you killed.

Pressing yourself up to the door you listened closely: nothing. The entity must have moved away to hunt, there was still a chance that the person might still be alive.

“In and out. In and out.” You repeated under your breath, whispering but still trying to reassure yourself. You turned the door knob and pulled the door open slowly. You shined the flashlight you had managed to find on one of the expeditions and found the cold, dank room smiling back at you.

There was nothing in the main atrium (?) but the corridors that led out seemed to be pulsing. The sounds of roaring were not far off. You quickly scanned each of the corridors until you suddenly stopped short.

At the far end of one of the hallways there was still a person. A person that was clearly breathing. You inched over to the person - a man with a white shirt, jeans and blonde hair. A man who was very much alive but bleeding freely from his leg. Moving quickly, you pulled off your backpack and grabbed the shirt you had stashed in there.

“Hi, are you okay? Are you awake?” You said as loudly as you dared to the man in front of you. He groaned loudly in response and you shushed him. The shirt thankfully wrapped around his jean covered thigh and you made a makeshift tourniquet. Stopping the worst of the blood flow.

“Can you get up? Dude, I need some help here, I don’t think I can haul you out myself.” You lightly shook the guy’s shoulder and he winced before his eyes slowly blinked open. And then it hit him where he was and what had just happened, it was like you watched him calculate your features in real time.

“Are you one of them? Where is Kat? Where is that thing?”

“Look, you need to be quiet, we need to get out of here. Before that thing comes back.” You whispered back and he nodded back - clearly still in shock. You put your backpack back on and slowly helped him back up.

“I know the way out this area but we’re going to need to climb. Do you think you can do that?”

“I-uh, I can try.”

“You better or else we’re both done for.” As if the thing heard you stealing his precious catch, a loud resounding roar echoed from one of the hallways. Followed by two screams. “Don’t focus on them, we can’t fight that thing. The only possible thing we can do is get the hell out of here. Now come on.”

Somehow it felt like the walk back to the door was longer. Like the hallways were in league with that inhuman thing. Or maybe it was just the giant weight of a man hanging off the side of you.

When your flashlight finally shined off the painted wood of the door you almost let out a shriek of joy. You moved quicker than before, dragging the guy in an effort to get to the door faster but when you reached it you suddenly remembered your survival instincts. And pressed your ear to the door before slowly pulling it up and open.

The smell hit you once again, not just damp but a mixture of saliva, blood, mold and decomposition seemed to emanate from the place.

“Okay we’re almost there, in you go.” You push the guy through first and then follow him before closing the door behind you both. Taking a deep (and slightly strangling) breath you grab hold of his left arm and pull it around your shoulders again. The rope was still hanging down through the ramp and you just realized that a part of that rope was hanging off him as well.

“Still okay?” His blue eyes met yours and he gave a weak smirk.

“Never better.”

“Okay so I’ll grab the rope and you can hold onto me as we both climb up. How does that sound?”

“Is that going to work?”

“We don’t really have options right now.”

“Okay.”

You nod and then approach the steep incline, you wrap your hand around the rope and that’s when you realize your hands are trembling. This was the longest conversation you’ve had with someone other than yourself in so long. The relief mixed with the excitement and adrenaline were doing horrors to your regulatory system but you had to get out of here. No use thinking about anything other than survival, although this was the first kernel of hope there had been in this awful place in so very long.

You start to pull yourself inch by inch and once you’re up a bit into the shaft, you slide down and smile at the guy.

“I think if you grab my backpack I should be able to pull us both up but you’re going to also need to put some weight on your legs to give us a push up. We have one chance at this.”

The guy’s face blanched and he smiled nervously before nodding his head. You were going to have to rely on adrenaline and the time spent climbing in this place to get the fuck out of the thing’s lair. It was now or never.

You smiled reassuringly at the guy and then turned around and grabbed the rope again. You felt his hands go around the straps of your backpack and you almost jolted. He had warm hands and they were touching you, even in the face of death you felt something akin to happiness to feel another person’s touch. It had been so long. Everything had been so long ago.

That was when you started pulling yourself up and using your legs against the floor (?) as leverage. He at least seemed to be doing his part because it wasn’t too hard for the first half of the shaft. Then it got a bit steeper. And it got harder and the muscles in your body started screaming.

If you let go, you die. If you let go, you die. If you let go, you die. If you let go, you die. If you let go, you die. If you let go, you die.

Those words kept spinning in your head as the rope started to cut the circulation in your hands and the straps of the backpack started to make what seemed like a permanent groove into your body. Literally dragging someone and your own body up a shaft was not a piece of cake. But this meant having someone to talk to, to help, to protect and if getting that would kill you then so be it.

So you kept going, you kept going as sweat pooled in the concaves of your body and your scalp became itchy. You pulled yourself up and you pulled this random person up and up and up. Sisyphus, look at me now asshole. 

And then you saw it, that stupid patterned couch that was holding you up was just inches away. So you pulled yourself up one last time and rested on the headboard of the couch. The guy finally detaches himself from you and it was a relief like no other. Both of your feet were now dangling into the abyss.

“I’m Bobby by the way.” He whispers and you look over to the man you dragged from the brink of death itself and you smile.

“It’s nice to meet you Bobby.”

After resting for a very short period of time, you grabbed the guy, Bobby, again and stumbled back through the now-familiar hallways. You were going back to your base (?), lair (?), home. It changed on what felt like a weekly basis, depending on the appearance of entities, hazmat people and the hellhole itself.

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere safe. I should be able to patch that up there.” You whisper, nodding your head down to his bandaged thigh. The blood had started to seep onto the orange shirt and all the movement definitely wasn’t helping it. You just hope the thing hadn’t clipped an artery.

“Who are you?”

“It’s a long story, I’ll tell you once we don’t have to whisper like this.” You wink and at least you get a strained huff and smile from Bobby.

“Isn’t it safe now though?” You shake your head and then motion him to stop. Urging him to experience the atmosphere of the place. The ever-constant hum of the lights, the sickly yellow of the walls that seemed to close in around you once you stop moving, the feeling of the floor breathing under your shoes and the sound of distant movement.

“This place, this level used to be fairly safe and then the thing that took you appeared. It likes to stalk its victims. So I’m taking you to a different area. One that is a little less… claustrophobic?”

The both of you start moving again and you turn right at the next junction to find yourself in the tiled pool space. Bobby eyes flash to yours but you’re currently focusing on not slipping on the tile and not letting him slip either.

“Not here either.” You say as you keep walking. 

And you walk for a lot longer than it took you to find him and the others in the first place. Bobby was getting weaker, you could feel him leaning more and more of his weight on your body. Not that it didn’t feel nice to have another warm body on yours but it was starting to concern you how much his leg was dragging. So you decided to take the shortcut. The one that led through the hotel.

You held him closer when you first passed onto the carpeted floors, you had both been silent most of the walk but now you looked at him and pressed your finger to your lips. It was imperative that he stayed quiet in this place. You knew the route like the back of your hand but if you made a noise or tripped or even looked at a door wrong you knew that there was no chance you were getting out of there alive.

So you walked slowly, quietly, with intention. The fastest way through was in the kitchens and then the manager’s office and then you would get to home. You held onto Bobby tightly, so tightly that he had shot you strange glances as you walked through the plush hotel lobby. The patterns on the floor always reminded you of that movie where the dad went crazy and tried to kill his family during a snowstorm.

The hotel had an eerie quality, not just because of what lurked in its walls but because of the way you knew someone had been here before. This was one of the levels you had explored that felt like it had housed a great number of people before whatever happened, happened. It was not just a distorted memory of a place but a pretty picture perfect replica of a place.

And now you were invading its territory with a bleeding man. Usually you only came here for the meagre amount of food the kitchen used to hold. Now this was more than life and death, it was your sanity.

When you finally reached the swinging doors that led into the kitchen, you tapped Bobby on the shoulder and strained a smile. His eyes were lidded and he was desperately trying to hold on. He didn’t look good.

You pushed the swinging door and went through, and then you walked and walked and walked until you reached the manager’s office and then you kept walking again. Until you reached the red emergency door with the upside down number panel code next to it. You looked around the dimly lit corridor and then pulled open the door before shoving Bobby in and quickly banging the door shut behind you - ensuring that it was fully closed. Just as you heard the familiar shriek of something inhuman on the other side. It sent a wave of shivers down your body and made gooseflesh appear on your arms.

“What the hell is that?”

“You don’t want to know. They tend to like that particular area of the hotel but they can’t get through, don’t worry. We’re here.” You pointed to the harshly lit office space with windows looking out into nothing and rows upon rows of cubicles going as far as the eye could see.

“This is safe?”

“Nothing likes it here. I think it’s too boring or too mechanical or something. Really shows you how much the office spaces sucks the soul of all things that inhabit it. Come on, let’s get you fixed up.”

“You still haven’t told me anything about yourself, all I know is your name and that you saved me.” Bobby said, panting slightly as he hobbled next to you over to one of the cubicles at the far left side, right in front of the windows.

“I promised I’d tell you once we’re safe. You can stop whispering too, by the way.” You motioned to the spinny chair that was in the cubicle and helped him sit down. Bobby let out a sigh of relief and closed his eyes for a moment.

“You’re not one of the things are you?”

“An entity? No.” You focus on rifling through your backpack and pulling out a bottle of water and a shirt. You also tried in vain to find if you had anything antiseptic, the water would have to do.

“Uh Bobby you’re going to need to take off your jeans.” You said, slightly sheepishly once you turned back to the man and found him looking at you with a questioning look on his face. It was strange how after so long in this place that literally and figuratively ate people you were still a girl after all.

“You could at least take me out on a date first.” Bobby smirked slightly but then started hiking up the remainder of the rope and unbuckling his belt. You turned around, in an effort to give him some privacy even though it was probably too late for that. Plus he had mentioned someone named Kat. You couldn’t just start jumping his bones just because he was the first human you had seen in months? Years? Decades?

“Ready.” You turn back towards him and then zero in on the orange shirt that he was pressing onto a gash in his left leg. The shirt was absolutely destroyed, soaked through with blood and it seemed to have started to drip as well.

“Okay, are you hurt anywhere else?”

“No, at least I don’t think so. My head hurts pretty bad and my shoulder is bruised to hell but that’s really bugging me.” He cracks a strained smile as you nod and then kneel down in front of him and urge him to move his hand from the wound. You were so close to his goddamn boxers but right now your attention zeroed in on the freely bleeding gash. 

You could almost see the layers of muscle from how deep it was. You bit your lip in contemplation and then told him to place the shirt back on the cut.

“That is really fucking deep, I’m surprised you even managed to walk on that thing. It looks like it needs stitches and I don’t have that. I think the best thing we can do is stuff it with something to stop the bleeding and then wrap it.”

“I’m at your disposal doc.” Bobby tilted his head and gave you a soft little smile but you could see the panic in his eyes. A panic you had been intimately familiar with since you somehow landed in this mess. It was that primal panic that made your life flash before your eyes as you fell down or a car whizzed past a little too close. He didn’t know if he was going to make it out of this alive.

“Listen to me, Bobby. You’re going to be okay. I swear on my life, I will make you better. I haven’t survived this long to lose someone just because of a little scratch. Okay?”

“Okay.”