I opened my eyes and the world was…dead.
No alarms. No shouting. No orderlies dragging me down cold, white hallways. Just silence. Cold, damp silence.
The floor beneath me wasn't tile anymore. It was cracked pavement, sticky with rot and… something else. I pushed myself up slowly, my hospital gown clinging to my skin with grime. My hands trembled—not from fear, not yet—but from confusion.
'Where am I?'
It looked like Hawkins. Or something that used to be. I couldn't remember the real thing, not clearly. I must've seen it once, a long time ago. As a child. Maybe that's why this place felt wrong. Familiar, but not. Like a dream of somewhere you barely remember.
Street signs poked out of the mist: MAPLE ST. The letters were rusted and half-eaten by rot.
Maple Street.
I stood on it, blinking through the red fog that clung to everything like blood in water. Decaying houses lined both sides—windows shattered, walls crumbling, doors half-open like mouths mid-scream. Powerlines sagged overhead like dying veins. The sky wasn't black, not quite. More like an endless bruise. And floating through it all, a fine black ash, like snow from a fire that never ended.
The air burned my lungs. Thick. Chemical. I coughed, hunched forward, covering my mouth with my sleeve.
What happened here?
The trees were dead. Twisted. Bark blackened and split. From them hung long, veiny vines—pulsing, wet, alive. They crawled across everything. Over fences. Down into gutters. Up through window cracks. I stepped over one and it twitched. I jumped.
This isn't real. It can't be.
CRACK.
A branch? No.
CRUNCH.
I froze. Something wet and slow slithered behind the fog.
Then came the growl.
Low. Wet. Like something dragging its throat across gravel. It echoed across the silence, closer than I wanted it to be.
I turned slowly.
Out from behind a flipped-over van, it came. Crawling. Tall. Lanky. Bone-thin but somehow heavy. Its limbs bent wrong, like a puppet jerked on tangled strings. Its skin was slick and stretched, glistening like raw meat. And its head—no eyes. Just a flower of flesh peeling open to reveal rows of jagged, trembling teeth.
I didn't move. Couldn't.
It sniffed the air, head jerking. Click. Click-click-click.
Then it turned toward me.
Run.
I bolted.
My bare feet slapped the asphalt. I didn't look back. I didn't breathe. I didn't think. I just ran.
I cut across a yard. The fog clawed at my face. I leapt a broken fence, the top lined with jagged metal. SCRAPE—pain tore through my side. I landed hard, crying out.
Blood soaked my gown. A tear on my ribs, deep and sharp. But I kept running.
Behind me, the creature shrieked. It wasn't a sound meant for this world. It rattled the windows. Made birds—if there were birds—drop dead from the trees.
I burst through the nearest house I could find. The door was half-hanging on its hinges. I threw it shut behind me and pressed my back against it.
Silence.
Only my breath. My heartbeat.
Then nothing.
No footsteps. No growl.
It was gone. Or waiting.
I slid down to the floor, legs giving out.
That thing… it wasn't human. It wasn't anything.
What the hell is this place?
And what was that thing?
My hand clenched my wound. The blood was warm. Real. Too real.
I gave it a name. Not because I wanted to. But because it felt like if I didn't, it would name itself.
The Maw.
It fit. It didn't just want to kill. It wanted to consume.
The house was dark. No power. Only the red mist filtering in through the grime-stained windows. Dust floated thick in the air like ash. The furniture was overturned, like the owners had fled in a panic. Mold climbed the walls in black veins. A trail of dark sludge led into the kitchen—and out of it.
I didn't check where it ended. But I hovered in the doorway, staring.
I could've sworn I heard something dripping in the next room. A low pat… pat… pat, like blood. My feet carried me forward half a step—then stopped.
No. Not yet. I don't know what's in there. Don't want to know.
Instead, I turned and moved. Slowly. Room to room. Quiet. Careful. I'd done this before. Not here. But in other places. Back in the lab, when I wanted to be invisible.
Every creak made me flinch. Every gust of fog against the window made me jump. There could be something hiding in the closet. In the attic. Under the bed. I checked them all.
Nothing.
Still, I didn't feel safe.
The living room was small, but there was a fireplace. I dug through the ashes and found a charred stick of wood. Not quite charcoal, but close enough.
The walls were blank.
So I started to draw.
Nothing good. Just lines. Shapes. A face I remembered—my mother's?—half-finished. I didn't know why I did it. Maybe just to remind myself I existed. That I wasn't fading into this place.
Upstairs, I found a kid's room. Posters curling off the walls. A stuffed rabbit missing one eye. Crayon drawings. A bed stripped to the frame. Shelves of dusty board games, their pieces long gone.
In the drawer: a compass.
I picked it up.
The needle spun. And spun. And spun.
I tapped it. Nothing. I held it steady. Still spinning.
I shoved it in my pocket. Not useful. Not yet.
The bathroom mirror was cracked. The sink filled with stagnant black water. I avoided my reflection.
In the hallway, I found a calendar. November 6, 1983. A red circle around the date.
That meant nothing.
But the clocks...
There were three of them. One in the hallway. One in the kitchen. One in the kid's room.
All stuck.
Twelve o'clock. Exactly.
Every single one.
I waited. Watched. Fifteen minutes. Then thirty.
Nothing moved.
Even the ticking... gone.
Tick-tick—
No.
Nothing.
Time isn't moving.
The thought chilled me worse than the fog.
Why? How? Was it broken tech? An illusion?
I checked the wound on my ribs. Still raw. Still fresh. No scab.
It's been hours.
But my body isn't healing. The clocks aren't ticking. Nothing changes.
This place is... stuck. Like it's trapped in a loop. Or outside time completely.
I didn't want to believe it. But the more I looked around, the more it added up.
The food in the pantry? Molded over, but not decomposing. The air? It hung heavy, stale, never moving. Not even the fog outside shifted much. Just... there. Like it had always been.
My head spun. My breathing grew shallow.
I grabbed the wall to steady myself.
Okay. Don't panic. Logically—if time isn't moving, then I'm the only thing that is. Somehow.
But that means I'm alone.
I backed into the living room and pulled the couch across the front door. Found some old nails and a hammer in the garage. Boarded up the windows. Reinforced the doors. Not perfect, but enough.
The Maw wouldn't get in. Not easy, at least.
I needed a base. Somewhere safe. Somewhere quiet.
This house would do.
I rolled up some blankets. Found a few bottles of water. Moldy, but sealed. Maybe drinkable.
In the mirror, I looked like hell.
Ragged. Thin. Pale.
I touched the mark on my wrist where my ID bracelet had been.
"Zero."
That's what they called me.
I don't remember my real name.
But in this place, names might not matter.
Only survival does.
The last thing I did before the light faded completely was sit in the corner, charcoal in hand, and draw the creature. The Maw. Its head. Its petals. Its teeth.
I didn't need to exaggerate.
It was already a nightmare.
And I knew it would come back.
Somewhere, out in that fog, it was waiting.
Somewhere, this place waited too. For me to understand it. Or become part of it.
And as I stared at the clocks—silent, frozen—I whispered to myself:
"Something's not right."