WAKE UP

RILEYSTAR

Jason Tyler woke up in his bed dazed and not fully sure how he got there. After a long pause he saw his pregnant wife sitting on the side of the bed with a hollow look in her eye. He kissed her and headed to work, the whole routine set on autopilot in his mind. He drove roads he never recognized but instinctively knew every turn. He’d walk through the doors greeting the receptionist and find his office where he’d file the same few HR complaints he’d seen a million times. Bryan harassed some woman. Tiffany said something insensitive to a minority group. Finally, he made it home and went to bed.

Jason did this routine over and over again; kissed his wife, went to work, filed Bryan and Tiffany’s mistakes, and slept. Wake up, kiss his wife, go to work, sleep. Wake up, go to work, sleep. One day, amidst the blur of his life, the only notable thing happened: his wife was gone. He felt something deep down maybe, but her disappearance didn’t truly matter; he went back to the old routine. He’d wake up and sleep, wake up and sleep, wake up and sleep, wake up and sleep, wake up and sleep, wake up and sleep, wake up and sleep, wake up and sleep.

Desmond Tyler and his friend Kyle drove to a shady, out-of-the-way neighborhood late at night, looking out of place in their nice Jeep amidst the run-down, forgotten housing. Finally, they made it to the place Desmond’s mother told him about—the house his father’s supposed to live in. He entered the rotted building, and the inside was worse than the outside. Trash littered the floor, bugs clinging to every surface, and the smell of a dying animal lingered in the air.

As he crunched his way through the trash-lined floor calling out his father’s name, he heard a moan coming from behind a closed door. Every step closer, the pained moans and wheezes grew louder, until eventually he opened the entrance to a pitch-black basement and walked down, each step on the flimsy wooden stairs causing the house to moan out in pain. At the bottom he turned on his flashlight, finally seeing the source of the noises. He saw a grey, withered, broken man on the floor. Half the features of a face were missing; its nose was flat, its ears were just holes, and its misshaped body was slick with a strange substance. Its arm twisted at unnatural angles, dragging behind its body as it slowly crawled forward with its feet.

Desmond woke up next to his pregnant wife, not fully sure how he got there or what he had been doing before. He crawled out of bed, stared at her lifeless face, kissed her, and drove off to work.