He ran down the seemingly never-ending corridor, too afraid to turn and look behind him. He had awoken to find his dorm mates strewn across their beds, blood dripping from their fingers and hollowed out chests.

Searching the room further he had come to notice something not right about one of the bodies of his friends. In replacement of his jagged, dark hair there were smooth, golden threads hanging from the edge of the bed, matted and caked with blood.

Curious, he cautiously approached the bed and drew back the blood stained covers. What he had mistaken for one of his friends turned out to be just as he had come to suspect. The lifeless face of an unfamiliar female stared up at him; her aquamarine eyes glazed and still. Her ripped body seemed to radiate with a bizarre inner light he had never before encountered within a Human. However, the discovery of this woman only served to bring about more questions. Where was his missing friend and where had she come from? And the ominous question of ‘why’ lingered in every inch of the scenario.

As if in reply to his thoughts, a sort of guttural growl caught Brandyn’s attention. Turning to face the corner from which the noise had come, he came to find himself staring into the face of a shadow; grey, bloodshot eyes seeming to rip and tear their way into his very soul. Dropping his eyes to the feet of the beast, there lay the lifeless body of his missing friend; cold, pleading eyes dim and glazed.

Fear had not frozen him, but more, given him speed. He had run to his limit, down the corridor for what seemed to be an eternity before he cut through a slice in the wall, entering into something of a shortcut. Now, his nerves finally calming slightly as the sound of heavy footsteps slamming the ground at his heels ceased, he stopped.

Leaning on his knees for a moment to catch his breath, Brandyn slowly built up the courage to look back.

Straightening his back, he prepared himself.

As he turned he felt a sharp pain in his stomach. Looking down, he trembled as the warmth ran from his body with his blood.

Still filled with shock, he followed the silver blade to the golden skin tight wrapped around it all the way to the wielder’s savage aquamarine eyes. Grinning back at him was the face of the dead girl. Blood still coated her once perfect face, smeared awkwardly across her lips and left cheek.

He felt his body grow slack as he fell to the floor, his knees jarring as they collided with the stone below.

With his cheek pressed to the stone, Brandyn watched the pool of blood grow before he slipped into an ominous sleep.

After what had seemed only seconds, Brandyn opened his eyes to a once more dark room. Jolting upright he stared around, fear bringing his heart into his throat. No blood, no dead bodies; in fact, no bodies at all.

To bring serenity to his muddled mind, he searched his stomach for a wound and was relieved to find none. However, the thin, fresh scar that he found in the centre of his stomach was slight cause for alarm.

Jumping he pressed his back hard against the bed head; his hand never met mattress, but rather, skin.

Looking down, Brandyn yelped with fright as he found his hand pressed to the wrist of another.

He pulled back to look into the face of the dead other.

Brandyn’s eyes grew wide and with a startled, somewhat choked gasp he drew back even further only to find no stable ground and fall with a heavy thud to the floor.

He rubbed his head where it had connected with the floor; the stone was cold against his bare skin. And then came the voice.

“Brandyn, are you okay?” She was alive. Again she was alive when he had believed her to be dead. She poked her gashed face over the edge of the bed, dripping blood onto his naked stomach.

“What...? You were dead! You were dead again! You’re supposed to be dead!” His voice cracked with panic and fear. What the hell was happening here?

“Brandyn, sweetie, are you okay?” The dead girl reached out and placed a meant-to-be-supportive, rather blood-covered hand onto his shoulder as blood began to seep from the corners of her burgundy lips.

He jumped to his feet. Unable to take any more Brandyn ran for the door, slamming it open and running once more down the dark and eerily silent corridor.

Running, he was no longer naked but wearing the black skull pyjamas he once owned as a child; matter of fact, he was a child.

He felt those old emotions flood through his body like an overwhelming tidal wave.

Scared and alone, he now ran down a long gravel lane. He heard the crunch of the stones beneath heavy boots and the thudding of footsteps hitting the ground hard behind him.

They were gaining on him.

He tried to speed up, running as fast as his short legs would possibly allow him. With his feet lacerated and bleeding as they were, it was hard to continue through the agony. With every step he took he could feel the bone in his heel grinding against the gravel under his feet.

They were catching up and he could run no faster. A deep sense of defeat dug itself into his stomach as his knees and ankle surrendered to the pain and sent him crashing to the ground, the small stones ripping and scraping his soft skin, tearing through his flesh to bring forth more blood.

Brandyn felt himself lift from the ground, stones falling from the front of his body, releasing themselves from his pyjamas as he was thrown against a wire fence.

“I’ll try to be gentle if you promise not to scream.” The voice echoed through his mind like a distant nightmare, locked away in attempt to forget it.

Disobeying the voice he cried for a woman who would never answer his calls.

“Mummy! Mummy please!” He continued to beg with the phantom woman as the gate was thrown open and he was pressed and held against the damp grass so tightly that he felt fingerprints bruising into his skin.

“Mummy!” He could not understand why she did not answer, why she had never answered, why she would not save him. He continued to cry as a rough hand clasped itself across his mouth, stifling his pleas as his clothes were torn from his person.

When he came to, Brandyn found himself lying in the cold wet grass of a narrow alleyway, just off the edge of the lane with sunlight littering his surroundings.

He could see the wire fence that had left thick, red welts across his back. Rubbing his arms gingerly he could feel the cuts and scrapes from the gravel and the bruises left behind from the man’s fingerprints.

His clothes were beside him.

He made to stand only to yelp in pain and collapse back to the grass. His feet were torn and aching from the road. He grabbed up his pyjamas and carefully pulled them on, doing his best to avoid his wounds.

Sitting and whimpering for a moment, Brandyn eventually made a second attempt to stand before falling to his knees.

Tears welled up in his eyes.

After several failed attempts to stand Brandyn opted to lie in the grass until he felt better or perhaps until he was found.

Closing his grey-blue eyes, he allowed the very daunting sleep that threatened to comatose him engulf him.

The colours of the world swirled and faded like water emptying down a drain and Brandyn knew no more.