The darkness was absolute. The air reeked of decay, a sickening cocktail of rot, acidic chemicals, and something unidentifiable—wet and alive. His chest rose and fell in rapid, shallow bursts, the oppressive weight of the space choking him. His hands trembled, blindly groping through the filth, but every movement unearthed fresh horrors.
Something slick and unyielding brushed his fingertips. He yanked his hand back, heart hammering so violently it threatened to shatter his ribs. The trash pressed against him like a second skin: shards of glass, sticky remnants of food, tattered cloth damp with unnameable fluids. He tried to scream, but his voice cracked, swallowed whole by the suffocating void.
The coffin shifted. Not from above—from within. A low creak echoed, the hinges moaning like tortured souls. His breath caught. Then came the sound: a faint, wet rustling, as if something was dragging itself through the detritus. It wasn’t his imagination. He wasn’t alone.
A cold, slimy tendril slithered across his thigh. He froze, paralyzed by the nauseating sensation. The thing coiled tighter, its surface slick and pulsing, like the body of some grotesque larva. Panic seized him, and he kicked, trash shifting violently as he thrashed. His hands collided with sharp edges and something soft that squelched beneath his grip. He gagged, bile burning his throat.
The whispers started, faint at first, a dry, crackling murmur like paper tearing in the wind. They grew louder, circling him in the darkness, weaving an oppressive symphony of malice. He couldn’t understand the words, but the intent was clear. They wanted him to know he was theirs.
Then came the breath. Hot, fetid, and impossibly close, it slid across his neck like a predator savouring its kill. A guttural hiss followed, a sound that seemed to crawl into his ears and nest in his brain. He jerked away, his shoulder slamming against the coffin wall. The air grew stiflingly hot, reeking of sulphur and putrefaction. He clawed at the lid, splinters driving under his nails as his fingers found a nail protruding from the wood. He tore at it, his own blood slicking his grip.
The trash shifted violently, and the whispers stopped. For a moment, there was silence—then the voice spoke. It was unlike anything he had ever heard, a cacophony of snarls, screams, and wet, gurgling tones. “You don’t belong here,” it said, each word dragging across his sanity like rusted blades.
Something cold and skeletal emerged from the trash, its fingers curling around his ankle. It wasn’t just a hand. It was a malformed thing, its surface writhing with smaller, twitching limbs that coiled around his leg. He kicked and screamed, but the grip tightened, dragging him deeper into the rancid heap.
The whispers became a crescendo. Words he couldn’t comprehend clawed at his mind, and with them came visions: a maw lined with infinite rows of teeth, black pits where eyes should be, and tendrils that reached endlessly into the void. They weren’t just in the coffin—they were everywhere, pressing against him from all sides.
“You cannot leave,” it rasped again, closer now. The voice seemed to come from within him, as though the words were carved into his very bones.
He clawed harder at the lid, his nails snapping as he tore at the wood. His chest burned with the effort, his lungs desperate for air untainted by decay. The voices screamed now, a wall of sound threatening to crush him.
The wood splintered, his hand punching through to loose, damp earth. He clawed his way upward, dirt filling his mouth and nostrils as he dragged himself free. The whispers receded, replaced by a suffocating silence. He collapsed onto the ground, gasping for clean air.
But something moved below. He forced himself to look back at the open coffin. The trash shifted unnaturally, coalescing into a shape. It was not human, not entirely. It loomed, a figure made of shadows and rotting filth, its body twitching with countless insect-like appendages. Its face was a void, save for the grin—a mouth of jagged, broken glass that gleamed with hunger.
“You cannot leave,” it rasped once more, the words reverberating in his skull.
The ground beneath him crumbled. Hands erupted from the earth, skeletal and decayed, their touch like ice as they dragged him back toward the coffin. He clawed at the ground, but it gave way, his screams swallowed by the darkness.
The last thing he saw was the creature’s grin, widening until it split its face in two. The void consumed him, and this time, there was no escape.
The darkness was eternal.
THE END
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