The hardware store was more strange in person, it made Levi uneasy, even unwell. It felt wrong, looked out of place. Its ashen walls were wide as they were tall. The uncomfortably perfect angles. It was like a flawless stone square, like it belonged apart of a pyramid. It had no windows, at least in the front, and besides a double door its face was featureless.
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Levi stood across the street, staring at the odd building. Tucked away in the darkness of an alley. Feeling whatever the sight conjured up. You can see over his shoulder, past him. You can see his hair, wild and out of sorts, but you couldn't tell the color in the shadows. The jacket he wore, dark green and rough, still, over his shoulder you can see buildings on either side opening up to the empty street and the store, like a chiseled rock. A cube the color of dense storm clouds and its ominous double glass door. Rich greenery behind it, the encroaching forest.
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Levi turned around, eyes cut, looked. He had the feeling of being watched, like he was on a stage, since waking up but the feeling stayed hidden, shy. It came barreling to the surface all of a sudden, like a torpedo. It felt like those watching eyes were right behind him, over his shoulder. But behind him only held shadows. He visibly shook, a chill. Turning his attention back on the odd building. Thinking he could just leave town, walk by and not look back but something pulled him here, something intangible. As wrong of a sight it was, sending signals of dread and discomfort, Levi couldn't deny that it felt like he was supposed to be here. Like a dentist appointment. He decided he couldn't resist the urge, not scratch the itch. He carefully, cautiously walked to the door.
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Levi grabbed the door handle and pulled, opening. He stepped inside. The store seemed like a normal department store at first glance, albeit devoid of life. A row of cash registers at the front and rows of massive shelves behind that. Long wires hung from the ceiling in the middle of each aisle, at the bottom a yellow hued light bulb and a small, grey shade. The rest of the floor space laid in darkness. It was with a second glance that things stopped adding up. The roof looked light-years away, same as the walls, both weren't visible from where Levi stood. The outside didn't look this gigantic. This was like the inside of a completely different store, just the doorways have gotten mixed up, leading where they shouldn't.
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Levi's curiosity hadn't quite been sated but it was quickly becoming overruled by a sense of foreboding. Just laying eyes on this place birthed more questions than answers. The survival and inquisitiveness clashed, his sensibility finally coming back to him, taking over. He turned, began reaching for the door. Bang. Gunshot. Somewhere in the murky depths of the store. He froze. A survivor, had to be. The monster's don't use guns. He turned back around, hesitated. He just couldn't resist scratching the itch. Sensibility subdued. He walked past the registers and deeper into the store. Desperate for the company of someone sane.
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Up close he could see on the open shelves in the aisles were only endless amounts of hammers and chisels, nothing else. Thousands. Forever. He stepped into an aisle and began walking. The tiny bulb lightening the way. He could see through to the other aisles, they were a mirror image of this one. He kept walking, stepping in and out of the light. Another one hung further down. Kept walking. The back wall might as well have been a cryptid, he couldn't prove it existed at all. The only sounds were his own footsteps. Soon, looking back was no different than looking forward. Shelves that stretched to infinity, it's only equal the darkness surrounding them.
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All of a sudden, all at once, like a bomb, the realization hit him. The person he was looking for could very well be The Raven. Or maybe he was wrong, maybe the smileys could use guns. His mind swirled with awful thoughts so densely he tripped over his own feet and fell. He shot up, dusted himself off, checked his aches and pains before a new, more frightening realization hit him like another bullet. He didn't know which direction he was walking. Which way led out.
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“It can't go on forever.” Levi said out loud, panic wanting to take over, stoke the fire, but that small phrase kept it at bay. “Can it?” He said under his breath. Uncertainty always following him, stalking him. Like the bitter, burnt smell at the end of a sweet scented candle. It ruins every moment, right at the end, salt in the wound. He started running.
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Levi ran blindly, passing under the spaced out dim light bulbs, the blurry shelves giving way to the spotty dark around him. No end, or beginning in sight. His ears picked up on an echo, the echo of his footsteps but it was delayed, late. He stopped dead in his tracks but the echo reminded. It wasn't an echo. He tried honing in, listened close. To his left, deeper into the abyss. He peered through the opening of the shelves. The aiels still went on forever but he saw movement. Three aisles over, a figure running. Levi grabbed the shelf, leaned forward to get a better look. His hand grazed one of the hammers, it teetered on the edge before plummeting. Levi didn't have time to react, just watched wide eyed as it fell with a thud on the tile floor. The figure stopped in a patch of darkness, looked over.
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“Hey!” The figure yelled out. Relief washed over Levi, it wasn't a smiley nor was it Raven. He yelled back, waved his arm. The figure ducked down, crawled through the opening of the shelf and into the aisle closer and kept coming, stopping at the neighboring aisle, Levi ran to meet them.
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They stood with the shelf between them, face to face through the opening. The man stood tall, taller than Levi and was slim, fit. Wearing army fatigues. The name tag on his chest said “Private Garm”. They could both feel a familiarity, like they knew each other, passed by on the street in a dream once, couldn't place it. “We have to hide!” Garm said, his voice strong with a residue of fear. The man said his name was Josef, that he woke up here and was being chased by some sort of monster. His hands flailed while explaining, couldn't sit still. Levi told him his name, said his story was the same as his. Josef looked to the ceiling, motioned Levi to keep quiet.
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A sound came into earshot, claws on metal. In the distance, a few aisles over, one of the hanging lights began to move. Like it was being pulled by a force unseen before swinging back into place, then the next one did the same and the next one. One came crashing down, shattering on the tiled floor, giving the darkness another foothold into the lighted path. Josef kept looking up, Levi did too but above them, he could only see inky blackness. The lights stopped moving, the metal scraping ceased. Quiet but not peace. Apprehension. Anxiety. They both jumped at the sudden loud splat of a heavy, solid thing hitting the floor. A boom, like a mattress falling over. Their heads swiveled to meet the sound, the movement.
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There in the aisle where Josef came from, a monster had descended from the ceiling. A monstrosity of nature and nightmares, not fit in this or any other reality. Josef and Levi stood as still as a frozen lake, it was a surprise their hearts kept pumping. In the openings of the shelves they could see it. It was a bear, the aura of a long dead fire hung around it, along with arms. Eight of them, protruding from its back on all sides, it stood on them like a spider. Its fangs stuck out of its mouth, elongated. It let out a snarl, long and deep. Staring into the souls of Levi and Josef. It didn't look at them with hunger, it looked at them with bloodlust.
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The bear stood on its hind legs, its eight arms on its back stretched out wide like a web, a daunting figure of horror and death. It let out a blood curdling howl that increased in pitch, enough to pierce eardrums. Levi and Josef put their hands over their ears. The beast scurried forward on its countless arms, mechanical, unworldly, unnerving. They found their way onto the shelf and it began climbing, the shelf tilting from its massive size. Josef ducked under the shelf meeting Levi in his aisle before ducking and going into the one behind them, pulling Levi with him. The beast soon disappeared into the darkness. The shelf shook and wobbled.
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Levi and Josef kept moving between aisles, knocking off hammers and chisels, trying to put as much distance between them and the spidery bear but to no avail. The shelf it climbed up tilted beyond correction, falling onto the next one with a deafening bang. Domino effect as each one buckled under the next and the shelves kept falling towards them. The desperation grew as they hurried faster until they hit a wall, the end.
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They huddled at the wall watching as the shelves kept toppling towards them. Another howl rang out from the depths, its maker unseen. Levi turned, faced the wall, started pounding. Concrete, solid, unmovable. That's when he noticed it, a mural carved into the wall. A small cabin next to wavy lines and a horse drawn cart. Levi didn't have time to process it before the falling shelves caught up to them, crashing down into the wall, breaking through it. They ducked down. Rubble rained down on them as the shelf broke through the wall, finally getting caught up on the thick cinder blocks. The light from the outside cut through the dark store, blinding.
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Levi's eyes were closed tight, Josef pulled him up by his jacket. Told him to come on as he climbed up through the newly formed hole in the wall, leaning down and offering his hand. Levi grabbed it, Josef pulled him up and over the wall. Both falling down on the dirt hard. They didn't have time to stand before the bear's many arms came out one after the other through the hole, all around the outside of it. What they were attached to stayed concealed in the black chasm but its paws gripped to the bricks on the edges, claws dug in, arms partly visible. Hunting. Like the bullseye of a horrific death, a sight no amount of whiskey, pills or sleep would let you forget.
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Josef and Levi both got to their feet. Levi, pulling out his revolver, let off a shot. He couldn't tell if he missed or if the beast wasn't phased by it. He didn't want to think about the latter. Like a slingshot, the beast catapulted out, landing behind them, leaving a crater in the dirt under its weight. Josef pushed Levi to the side, yelled at the beast, picked up pieces of rubble and throwing it. The beast reacted, its arms carrying it at speed. Josef looked over one last time to Levi, unspoken but understood. He jumped back up, grabbing the edge of the cavity in the wall. The bear jumped with incredible force, tackling Josef, both vanishing into the abyss of the infinite store. Crashing and screaming. Metal and claws. Levi watched in shock, crawled away before standing and sprinting across the street towards the bridge that led out of town. It was a blink, a snap of a finger. Levi didn't think, he couldn't, he was fueled by fear. Keeping the trauma behind him as long as he could. He tried to stick in all in the box in his mind where unpleasant things went but it was starting to overflow, started to flood, and he began to drown.
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