John's eyes snapped open, and his first thought was, What the fuck happened? He was lying flat on his back. The ground beneath him felt wrong. Soft. Unnatural. He blinked, trying to make sense of his surroundings, but all he could see were shapes in the dim light. Shattered streetlights hung overhead, but their glow seemed twisted, flickering like dying candles.

  Wasn't he just on the highway? Where the hell was he?

  His body was sore, but not like normal. He felt like he'd just woken from a nightmare. Head spinning, heart pounding, but everything... felt wrong.

  He sat up, but the world itself didn’t cooperate. His body swayed as if gravity had forgotten what it was doing. Blinking hard, he tried to focus. This couldn’t be real. He rubbed his face, feeling the stubble scrape against his fingers. His hands were clammy, and the air smelled like mold. Like dust.

  He finally stood.

  The building around him was twisted. The ground was cracked, broken, like the Earth itself was being pulled apart. There were figures in the distance, movements he couldn’t quite make out. He reeled for explanations, but couldn't think of a single one.

  Then something moves in his peripheral vision.

  A shadow in the distance, moving toward him at the pace of a slug. At first, he thought it was just his mind playing a sick trick, but it began to walk towards him.

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  It definitely wasn’t human..

  Twisted out of proportion.

  An amalgamative mass of muscles that didn’t fit, a face that was too deformed to be anything but an insult to nature itself. Clothes hanging from its body like they were an afterthought. It moved with purpose, its eyes locked on him.

  John stumbled backward, heart racing.

  “What the hell...?” His voice cracked as he tried to speak, but no sound came out.

  The thing grinned. It wasn’t a smile, though. It was just a grotesque twisting of features, a mockery of everything human.

  John’s head spun, panic climbing up his spine. No. This isn’t real.

  But the thing kept coming, not stopping for a second.

  He turned, stumbling over his own feet. His lungs burned. He wasn’t sure how long he ran, but it didn’t matter. No matter how fast he ran or where he went, the creature was always right behind him. The dread of its presence suffocating him.

  The air felt like it was closing in around him, the floor twisting beneath his feet, like the whole world was turning against him. His breath was ragged.

  And then...

  The thing was right there. Right behind him. He didn’t even hear it move; it just... was. It grabbed him. Its grip was like iron, its fingers digging into his skin.

  John’s body went stiff. His heart thudded painfully in his chest, the panic making his vision blur.

  “Please... No...”

  The creature’s grin widened, and its breath washed over him, foul and thick with rot, stinging his nostrils.

  Then it yanked him upward, and for one brief, horrible moment, John saw the thing’s twisted face up close, its features melting together into one horrifying blur of agony.

  Then, just as quickly as it had started, everything disappeared as he felt the creature's jaws clamp around his head.

  The world went black.