The tune keeps playing as the truck’s engine revs once, almost cheerfully, before it slowly drives away, taking what was left of Lena with it.
As the music grows distant, the store plummets into a horrible silence, punctured only by our ragged breathing and the blood dripping on the window.
I can’t move, my legs have turned to stone, and all I can see is Lena’s eyeballs lying on the floor, staring at nothing.
And I realize, more than ever, that this island isn’t just showing us our fears. It’s fucking feeding on them and us.
“We need to get out of here!” Sarah yells as she hyperventilates whilst hugging herself.
“Lena…” Lotty weeps falling to her knees, head in her hands.
Mattie’s trembling hand finds my arm, gripping hard enough to bruise.
“We have to go,” she whispers, tone quivering. “Now, before it comes back. Maybe there’s another way out of this store.”
I nod numbly before we head toward the back, our feet slipping and sliding in the spreading pool of Lena’s blood.
Once we reach a fire exit, we push through the door, stepping out into the rain once again. Moving low and fast along the side of the building, every breath I take tastes like blood and failure.
But when we reach the street, I freeze mid-step, my arm tearing from Mattie’s hand as she continues forward.
There, in the middle of the cracked road ahead, stands that white, mangled tree. Bone-pale bark twisted into unnatural angles, branches reaching out like broken fingers.
It looks diseased, and it certainly doesn’t belong there.
A chill ripples up my spine, as a whisper slithers over my ear, soft at first. But then they come louder, overlapping into screams, broken pleas, children crying, and women begging.
Suddenly, my vision warps into something dark and cruel. The outlines of lifeless bodies hanging from each branch by thick, rotting ropes takes form.
Their hollow eyes stare straight at me as the wind makes them sway gently, like macabre ornaments.
The whispers turn into my name, over and over, spoken in voices I thought I’d never hear again. The tree pulses, as if it’s starving for one more body to hang among the rest. Mattie tugs at my arm, but I barely feel it.
The tree is waiting in the middle of the street, patiently offering me a place among the deceased.
I start to walk forward, one bare foot at a time, in a daze, pulling toward the serenity of death.
A sudden loud, high-pitched, unhinged, squeal slices through the whispers, yanking me away from the odd feeling, and my head snaps around.
The pig-headed butcher rounds the corner of the building, massive and hulking, rolls of fat jiggling under the blood-crusted apron.
His cleaver drags across the cracked pavement behind him, leaving a fresh trail of sparks and dark fluid. The ugly pig snout twitches, black eyes locked forward as if it already smells my fright.
Terror detonates through me, my gut knotting, and without warning, I tear my arm free from Mattie’s grasp with a strength I didn’t know I still had.
She calls my name, but her voice is already distant, swallowed by the rain and the pounding of my own heart.
I run in the opposite direction from the others, away from the tree, away from the group, away from everything, my legs burning as I sprint blindly down the ruined street, feet slapping through puddles and rubble.
The rain lashes my face, stinging my lips, and behind me, the pig lets out another shriek, but it’s closer now, excited and almost ecstatic in its craving.
Taunting whispers rise from the dark between the buildings as I pass them, slipping out of cracked windows and alley mouths, calling my name in voices that sound like my father’s, like the men who hurt me, like every version of me that never escaped.
Suddenly, I trip on a broken piece of pavement, and my body slams into the ground with brutal force, my forehead cracking against the concrete with a thump.
Warm blood pours instantly from the gash in my scalp, mixing with the cold rain and streaming down my face.
With my sight swimming, I turn onto my back with a groan. But then, a gigantic shadow falls over me, and the pig-head comes into view.
