Shattered

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.

"What a relief," Jake sighed exhaustedly. He'd been looking for help since his car broke down a few miles back. He couldn't go back to town to get a tow; the police there would definitely be looking for him. Cops tend to frown on people who rob a liquor store and kill one of them while escaping. Jake had only managed to escape the patrols, but with the barking and howling behind him, he was sure search dogs were on his trail. Diving into a pond filled with god-knows-what could only mask his scent for so long.

"At least, I could hide out there until morning," Jake surmised. Though his leg was torn up from running through bramble bushes and climbing over a barbed wire fence, he limped as fast as could toward the door. He noticed that, though the candle in the window burned brightly enough to see from a hundred yards away, he couldn't make out anything inside the cabin. Shrugging that off, he reached the door and knocked.

There was no answer.

"Hello?" Jake said at the door, loudly enough to be heard inside but not so loud that he would alert the cops still trying to track him.

There was still no answer.

Jake pressed his ear to the door and listened.

There was no sound.

Jake was confused. It seemed like there was no one there. So, who lit the candle in the window? Jake started to back off in concern when he heard the barking of the search dogs behind him. It was faint, but he could tell the patrols were closing in. Seeing no other choice, he tried the handle, and the door opened with the hinges creaking loudly enough to wake the dead. He charged in and pulled the door shut behind him. The slamming of the door shook the whole cabin, dropping the overhanging shutter over the window and knocking the candle down and putting it out.

Jake was in total darkness. He couldn't even see his hand in front of his face. Further, he couldn't hear anything, not inside the cabin nor from the outside. The barking of the search dogs disappeared the moment the door closed. Were it not for the fact that he could at least hear his own breathing and shuffling footsteps, he'd swear he was in a vacuum.

Jake limped a few steps forward into the oppressive darkness, his arms outstretched and sweeping across, hoping to stumble across anything that could give him some bearings. After probably the longest minute one could ever experience, the back of his right hand brushed across a string. Bringing his left hand over to join his right, he grasped it. It felt like the pull cord for an overhead light. Relieved, he pulled the cord.

An overhead light clicked on, blinding Jake for a few seconds due to the complete pitch blackness he was in. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the light, and when he could see again, his confusion intensified. He appeared to be standing in a long corridor made of wrought iron. The corridor appeared to run for miles ahead of him. Lined along the corridor were numerous doors, all camouflaged so perfectly with the surrounding walls that he had to squint just to make them out.

"Wait," Jake quietly said to himself. "This is impossible. I could've sworn I just entered a little log cabin, not a factory. Something's wrong here."

Uneasiness welled up inside Jake to the point that he thought he should just get out and take his chances with the cops. He turned back towards the door he came in... but there was no door. Behind him was nothing but a solid wall of iron.

"What the hell's going on?" Jake spat. He pressed the palm of his left hand against the wall, trying to feel for the door he closed, only for his hand to burn like he touched a stovetop. Pulling his hand back and cursing, he looked around for any sign of the way he came in, but there was nothing except the candle that was knocked down when he slammed the door. Jake was trapped.

In a panic, Jake reached for the cord for the overhead light, grabbing it with his right hand. He also stretched his arms to see if he could touch the wall where the door was, as well. He could only lightly brush it with his fingertips, sending searing pain from his hand to the center of his brain, but that was good enough for him. He pulled the cord, and the light clicked off, surrounding Jake in impenetrable darkness once again.

Jake reached out again in the direction of the wall he burned himself on. After a few frustrating seconds of fumbling around in near-total blackness, his fingers made contact, not with iron, but with wood that was so rough, splinters cut into his previously-burned fingers. Confused again, Jake pressed his fingers into whatever they found and pulled the cord.

Light came to life overhead while Jake's eyes focused on what his slowly numbing fingers were touching. It was a dead tree. Jake pulled his hand back quickly, slicing his ring finger open on the shredded bark. By instinct, he started sucking on the bloody wound and looked around. The cord was attached to a lamppost sitting at the top of a small hillock, in the center of an old cemetery which wouldn't look out of place in an old horror movie. Thick mist covered the ground but failed to cover hundreds of grave markers in various states of decay. A low hiss as from an attacking viper hung over the air.

Paranoid over what could be out there, Jake reached for the cord to turn the light out again... only for his hand to find empty air. The cord was gone. His head swimming, Jake dropped to his knees on the dead grass while he tried to rationalize what was going on. One minute he was entering a cabin, the next he was in an iron corridor, and then he was in a scene straight out of The Wolf Man. What could this all mean?

From Jake's left came another hiss, closer and louder than before. Terrified, Jake jumped to his feet fast enough to give himself whiplash. His head spinning with undiluted dizziness, he tried to take a step only to lose his balance and tumble off the hillock and into the mist down below. He closed his eyes, waiting for the spinning to stop, only for his momentum to come to a halt with his head cracking against hard stone. Then he knew nothing.

Regaining his senses after who knows how long, Jake opened his eyes and looked around slowly. He was at the bottom of the hillock, deep in the misty graveyard. Feeling a warm wetness at the back of his neck, he reached back behind his head only to feel the sharp sting that can easily be associated with an open wound. He turned around and found a fresh splash of blood defiling a rather new headstone.

"Great," Jake mumbled bitterly. "Add that to the finger and my leg. Is there somewhere on my body that's not gonna get torn up before the night's out?"

"HELLO?"

Jake jolted back to awareness when he heard a call from deeper in the fog.

"IS ANYONE THERE?"

Jake dragged himself to his feet despite the loss of coordination that was an easy sign of a concussion. He limped as quickly as he could in the direction of the voice. After a minute of trying to dodge open graves, piles of dirt with shovels, and various headstones while fighting the fog at his feet and in his head, he stumbled on the source of the voice. It was a disheveled man who was spread-eagle, his four limbs tied to nearby headstones. Jake stumbled into one of the headstones confining the man, out of breath and cross-eyed from the head injury.

"Are you alright?"

"Right now," the man replied. "But if that snake finds me, I'm dead."

"Was that the hissing I kept hearing?" Jake asked.

"Yeah, that's it," the man answered. "I think it's having trouble finding me in the fog. Please, get me out of here. I can't handle snakes."

"Alright," Jake agreed. "I saw something that should get you out. Wait a second."

Jake turned around and stumbled back to the piles of dirt at the freshly dug grave sites. He yanked out one of the spaded shovels. Jake returned to to the man, ready to cut the ropes holding him there...

Only to find that the ropes were gone, replaced by living rattlesnakes. The man's eyes were wide with terror, but he couldn't make a sound. A fifth rattlesnake had wrapped itself around his throat, crushing his neck. Jake raised the shovel to cut through one of the snakes holding the horrified man there, but he froze in placed when a more monstrous hiss was let out right behind him.

Jake spun around to see what made that hiss, lost his balance, and tumbled towards the ground again. He instinctually dropped the shovel when he lost his balance, and his face landed on the handle when fell, crushing his nose. While cringing from the new searing pain between his eyes, he felt something large run over his calves, hissing as loudly as a broken gas main as it went. Jake dared not move, holding as still as possible through his new agony, until he stopped feeling contact on his legs several extremely long moments later. As blinded by pain as he was, as much as he wanted to scream in agony, a blood-curdling shriek from the man he tried to help made his own scream die in his throat.

Jake slowly turned to look. The snake holding his throat closed had slithered off, leaving the four restraining his limbs as tightly as the ropes Jake swore were there before. However, the guy's attention wasn't directed at them; he was focused on something above his head. It looked like a bull python, only twenty times larger. It opened its mouth to hiss, and Jake was in shock. Its mouth opened wide enough to swallow a whole casket. The man screamed at the sight...

And the python dropped its open maw down on him. The poor fool's torso disappeared, his screaming muffled by the snake's thick flesh. Sensing that he could very easily be seconds, Jake forced himself to his feet. Though his nose was bleeding, his head was still spinning from hitting the gravestone, and he was still limping on a damaged leg, his adrenaline was coursing through his body faster than it ever had. He limped away from the scene as his legs could carry him. He was still cross-eyed from pain, and he could still barely see anything in the mist. However, he couldn't stop moving, the hisses from the oversized python spurring him to keep moving. He turned to look back to see if the snake was following, and his right foot lost contact with the ground suddenly. Tumbling forward, he grabbed a nearby tombstone as the rest of his body fell into a freshly dug grave. Looking down, the hole appeared bottomless, descending into nothing but blackness. Jake tried to pull himself out of the pit with his remaining adrenaline-charged strength, but his grip failed him. The tombstone slipped out of his grasp, and closing his eyes, he fell into the abyss...

Landing seconds later on what felt like a pile of various sharp objects. A pungent aroma filled the one nostril that wasn't already filled with dried blood, and his ears were filled with the screams of thousands, if not millions. Opening his eyes, the first sight that greeted him was fire, endless swaths of fire in nearly every direction. He sat up to see what he landed on. It was a pile skeletal remains as tall as a hill. Jake could only come to one conclusion.

"Am I dead?" he asked.

Jake tried to pick himself up, but his injured legs still barely supported his weight, and he was still dizzy from cracking his head on that infernal headstone.

Jake reasoned, "I guess I can't be dead. I doubt wounds like these carry to the afterlife."

"NOT YET!"

A deep booming voice more terrifying than the growl of a hungry bear echoed from seemingly every direction all at once. Jake grabbed a femur protruding from the bone pile to support himself. Looking around, he couldn't see anything or anyone that could've made that horrible noise.

"Who are you?" Jake called out. "Are you Satan?"

"YOU'D WISH, MORTAL!" the voice roared. "HE'S IN ANOTHER PLANE OF EXISTENCE!"

"What do you mean?" Jake yelled.

"YOU THINK YOUR REALITY IS THE ONLY ONE THAT EXISTS?" the monstrous voice bellowed. "IT'S JUST ONE PLANE THAT CONNECTS TO OTHERS. FEW FIND THE CONNECTIONS TO OTHER REALITIES. FEWER STILL EVER FIND THE WAY BACK."

"The cabin," Jake thought. "That was the entry point. If I can find my way back to that door, I'd get back to my reality..."

"EASIER SAID THAN DONE, FOOL!" the voice snarled. "THIS PLANE IS SHAPED BY THE THOUGHTS OF THOSE TRAPPED HERE. IF SOMEONE DOESN'T WANT AN EXIT TO EXIST, IT WON'T!"

The voice's words had barely stopped echoing through the infernal realm when Jake started hobbling away from the bone pile, thinking to himself. If this reality is affected by thought, maybe his thoughts could get him out. He stopped, leaning on the pilfered bone for support and closed his eyes, clearing his mind of everything except his desire to go home. After a few moments, he opened his eyes...

A door appeared in a rockface ahead of him. Relieved, Jake hobbled to the door as fast as his limp could carry him. Reaching the door, he set aside his makeshift walking stick and pushed the door open with all his might...

Only for a fireball to blast out of the opening, setting Jake's right arm on fire! Shrieking in pain, Jake pounded his arm against the rockface, trying to put out the flames, barely noticing the door closing itself in front of him.

The demonic voice laughed maniacally. "DID YOU REALLY THINK IT WOULD BE THAT EASY? BESIDES, I DON'T THINK THEY WANT YOU TO GO."

Jake stopped thinking about his scalding arm at those words. "They?"

Jake turned to look behind him and felt his heart stop. Shambling out of the flames were... things he couldn't identify. They looked like people that had much of the flesh torn away, like destroyed costumes. The rest of them looked like reddish-brown demons similar to the Imps from Doom. They growled and drooled like rabid dogs, and there were hundreds coming through the wall of fire, approaching him.

The things started charging, and Jake grabbed the bone and started hobbling away. Every step was agony, but Jake's fight-or-flight response was firmly on flight. As he slowly raced through the hellish landscape, more of those warped beasts continued to pour out of the walls of fire from every direction. As the things started to gain on him, Jake tried to turn his thoughts toward escaping.

Suddenly, a beast reached up from underground and grabbed Jake's ankle, bringing him crashing to the ground on his already burnt arm. The pain of the impact blinded him, but by instinct, he kicked the beast's hand off him. He rolled to his side to get to his feet and almost tumbled into a hole to nothingness next to him. He was sure it wasn't there a moment ago, but he didn't have time to question it. The rotting freaks were almost bearing down on him. With nothing left to lose, Jake rolled into the hole...

But there was no falling. He was no longer on rock but instead metal. Jake looked up. He was back in the corridor that he entered from the cabin, except halfway to the light at the end. He barely registered the sight when the whole corridor shook from the growl of whatever was running that nightmarish landscape he just escaped. Pushing himself to his feet with his last remaining strength, Jake hobbled toward the light as fast as possible. Every growl created a tremor that threatened to knock him back to the ground, but Jake couldn't stop. That light was getting closer...

Closer...

Almost there...

Suddenly, he was bursting out the door of the cabin, the sunlight greeting him like an old lover. Jake hobbled another hundred feet away from the cabin before his adrenaline drained and his feet finally failed. He collapsed on a clearing of soft mud. At that point, he didn't care if the cops or the guard dogs found him. He was back to his world. He started to close his eyes to get some much needed sleep...

Then, Jake felt all of his limbs restrained like they were all grabbed at once. His eyes shot open, and he looked down. Arms half torn apart had grabbed his arms from wrist to shoulder, and snakes had wrapped themselves around his legs from his ankles to his crotch. The more he struggled, the tighter they held on.

Finally, Jake heard the evil voice again. "THERE'S NO ESCAPE."

Fire erupted from every point on Jake's body that the beasts touched. The pain was unbelievable. Jake couldn't hold in anymore. He screamed like he had never screamed before...

The search dogs perked up.

"What is it, boys?"

The K-9 officer stopped examining the empty cabin where Jake's trail went cold to check on his trusty canines. The dogs looked around like they had just heard a dog whistle and whimpered, but their master couldn't tell what got their attention.

The attending Sergeant asked, "Did they find him?"

"Doesn't look like it," the K-9 officer responded.

"Well, he can't have just disappeared. Yet, the trail stopped here," the Sergeant moaned irritatingly.

After several long minutes of scouring the grounds surrounding the cabin, the cops decided to return to their checkpoint at the road near Jake's abandoned car. Behind them, a mound of soft grass mere feet away from the cabin door billowed light smoke from seemingly nowhere.

Thanks for reading this little story! Let me know if you want to see more, and take care!