No Escape: Ending Two

It stared at me, and I stared at it. Then it howled, its raw, wrinkled muzzle up at the ceiling. And I screamed, and covered my ears and then covered my face in my arms, shaking.

Over my breathing and the sound of my heart beating I could hear clicking claws on the floor, lots of them. And I felt and heard, more than saw, the enormous creatures pile into the room; inside the doorway, on top of destroyed furniture, jumping onto the bed and sending hospital dust flying before it looked down at me. I could feel their eyes on me, all of them.

I wanted to run and scream, to claw my way free, to fight back and somehow escape. But two things held me back:

One, they could have killed me if they’d wanted to.

And two, they could have killed me if they’d wanted to.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I realized I hadn’t seen any blood stains anywhere. Not except for right outside my room, and I’d just found out what had happened to that guy. There had been mayhem and property damage, but not one death that I had seen.

Not even mine.

Slowly, I cracked my eyes open, still shaking. Then I squeezed them shut again, shivering convulsively, instincts grabbing hold of my innards and twisting them into knots. Long seconds passed before I could actually look up at the creatures; deformed, untreated anthros, their skin pale and raw with patches of fuzz. Their eyes glowed like wildcats’, and their animal features seemed cancerous.

Another long moment passed before I remembered my “dream,” and the creatures surrounding my bed. I’d thought they’d seemed malevolent. Could they have been … worshipful?

Could they have known who I was, to them?

The human-dog-thing wearing night vision goggles grinned down at me, and wagged his tail happily. Then he howled again, and the creatures with him joined in. I did too, coughing and sputtering but trying my best.

I had no idea what was going to happen to me. I didn’t understand what had happened to them, or how to communicate with them. And I didn’t know what they remembered, or what they wanted, or how much of their human selves was left.

But it looked like I was going to find out.

Read the other ending