Boxed In, Blasted Out, and Now Being Stalked by Something That Clearly Skipped Leg Day (And Possibly All of Existence)
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Author Note: Well, that escalated quickly! Sawyer's night shift just went from bad to "call an interdimensional exterminator" levels of awful. Hope you're enjoying the chaos, because things are about to get a whole lot more… unearthly. Don't try this at home, folks. Or in a hospital. Or anywhere, really.
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"Must be the exhaustion playing tricks on my eyes," Sawyer muttered under his breath, his voice barely audible in the stillness of the room. It came out hoarse, like something spoken in a dream. His throat felt dry. He licked his lips, trying to shake the creeping sense of unreality, and leaned in again.
With cautious fingers, he turned the box over, examining every inch of its tarnished surface. He searched for a latch, a hinge, even the faintest seam—anything that might suggest an opening. But there was nothing. The box felt like a single, unbroken piece of metal, forged as one whole object. No gaps. No locks. No way in.
It didn't make sense.
Boxes, by nature, had openings. But this thing—this relic—felt like it was never meant to be opened by ordinary hands. The surface was cool to the touch, oddly smooth in some areas, and jagged in others where the symbols had been carved. Each moment he stared at it, the box seemed to become more unreadable, more wrong.
Then it happened.
Without warning, the box began to expand.
Not open. Expand.
The metal groaned with a low, grinding sound, as if ancient gears were turning deep inside. The box stretched outward, its sides lengthening rapidly, its height increasing with a grotesque sort of life. Sawyer gasped and instinctively backed away, his legs bumping into the bench behind him. He lost his footing and fell, his spine hitting the floor with a dull thud. The breath rushed out of his lungs in a sharp gasp.
His eyes locked onto the box, which now stood nearly twice its original size, humming with some inner vibration. The sight chilled him to his core.
He scrambled up, heart pounding wildly against his ribs, every nerve in his body suddenly awake and screaming. He staggered toward the door, each breath sharp and uneven. His hand shot out for the handle, desperate to pull it open, to flee, to run from whatever this was.
But the moment his fingers brushed the cold metal of the doorknob, the overhead lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then they began to strobe erratically, each flash casting twisted, exaggerated shadows across the room. The distorted shapes danced along the walls and ceiling like writhing creatures, feeding his growing panic.
"No, no, no—" he whispered, yanking at the handle.
And then, silence.
With a final, ominous flicker, the lights went out entirely.
Darkness swallowed everything.
Thick. Inky. Complete.
The sudden loss of light was like being dropped into a void. The air in the room seemed to grow heavier, pressing against his chest, making it harder to breathe. The dark wasn't just an absence of light—it was a presence all its own, a living thing that seemed to coil around him with silent, suffocating intent.
Sawyer froze.
He could feel his own pulse in his ears now, rapid and loud. His fingers were still wrapped around the doorknob, but the cold metal did nothing to anchor him. The room felt foreign—warped, as if the darkness had swallowed the reality he knew and replaced it with something else entirely.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
And the danger… whatever it was… hadn't even fully begun to reveal itself.
He turned back to the red light that popped up in the darkness it was coming from the box.
The red glow emanating from the box was no longer a faint shimmer teasing the edges of his vision. It was no illusion now—no trick of the light born from exhaustion. It pulsed with a steady, ominous rhythm, as if the box itself had a heartbeat. The light throbbed in the suffocating darkness like a warning flare, flooding the room with its violent hue. Sawyer stood frozen, his breath catching in his throat as the brightness dug into his eyes, burning itself into his retinas. He squinted, but the color followed, searing through his vision like a ghost that refused to fade.
This wasn't just light. It was a presence. And it was watching him.
A flicker of something stirred in the back of his mind—a memory, faint and disjointed. It was there for a moment, just a flash: the same red hue, the same intensity, years ago perhaps, tucked away behind some traumatic veil. But the memory slipped through his grasp like sand through fingers, leaving only a sharp sting of recognition. He had seen this before. Somehow. Somewhere.
But the where, the when, the how—it all remained a blur, smothered beneath layers of fear and confusion.
He took a shaky step back, the glow casting his shadow long across the tiled floor. His knees were trembling now, and there was a hollowness in his gut that made him feel like he might throw up. Every part of him screamed that this box, this thing, was never meant to be touched—never meant to be opened. It wasn't a package. It wasn't a gift. No one sent this out of kindness.
This was a warning. Or worse, a trap.
"This... this isn't real," he whispered, his voice trembling with denial. He wanted so badly to believe it. "It's just a dream."
He clung to the idea like a lifeline, his arms wrapped tightly around himself, trying to squeeze the fear out of his body. His voice cracked as he continued, barely louder than a breath. "It has to be. I'm probably passed out in the break room or something... Yeah, just another one of those hyper-real nightmares. Stress. Fatigue. That's all this is."
But even as he said it, the words felt paper-thin. Hollow. Powerless.
The box loomed larger now—somehow still growing, still pulsing—casting a red, hellish glow over the walls. What had once fit in his arms now resembled a monolithic altar, its surface etched with shifting, ancient symbols that no longer seemed inert. They moved, wriggling slightly, alive in their own right. Watching. Breathing.
Sawyer's chest tightened. His lungs refused to expand fully. The air was too thick, too warm, too charged with something that had no place in the waking world.
"No," he whispered again, shaking his head slowly, eyes wide. "Please... just let me wake up."
But there was no bed beneath him. No familiar beep of hospital monitors in the distance. Just silence.
And that awful, red light.
⁕
But his body wouldn't believe the lie—no matter how much he wanted it to be true. The comforting logic of dreams crumbled beneath the overwhelming dread pulsing through his veins. His primal instincts, raw and ancient, rejected any illusion of safety. Every nerve ending was alight with warning, screaming at him to run, to survive. His skin prickled with cold sweat, and his heart pounded so violently he thought it might burst through his chest. It wasn't just fear anymore—it was terror in its most primal, visceral form.
He stumbled backward, eyes never leaving the box, his breath coming in short, panicked gasps. He didn't think. He couldn't. His mind had gone into survival mode, one desperate command screaming louder than the rest: Get out. Now.
He lunged toward the door, fingers fumbling for the handle, the cool metal stinging his palm with how cold it felt. His whole body trembled as he gripped it, every muscle tensed to flee. He was counting the seconds in his mind, not even aware he was doing it. One… two… three… four… five.
That was all he had.
Then the world erupted.
The explosion didn't sound like a bang—it felt like reality itself had been ripped open. The force struck him before the sound did, a sudden, violent shockwave that sent his body flying through the air like a ragdoll. He hit the corridor floor hard, the impact knocking the air from his lungs, pain splintering through his side like broken glass under skin. There was no time to scream. No time to process. Just force. Heat. Noise.
Then came the fire.
It didn't feel like flames. It felt like being swallowed by the sun. A wall of searing, relentless heat consumed everything in its path. He could feel it crawl across his back, licking his skin through his clothes, blistering, biting. He wanted to curl into himself, to shrink away, but his body was too stunned to obey.
But he was still conscious. He could feel it. And if there was pain, there was still life—however fragile, however cruel.
The air trembled with the aftermath, his eardrums ringing with such intensity that it drowned out his thoughts. It wasn't silence—it was the sound of shock. A distorted hum that made it hard to focus, to breathe, to do anything except lie there, staring up at the ceiling that had somehow remained intact above him.
Eventually, with a groan of effort, Sawyer rolled onto his side and pushed himself up on one elbow. His limbs felt alien, disconnected, as though they belonged to someone else. His head throbbed, and his eyes burned with tears brought on by smoke, by dust, by raw emotion.
When he turned back toward the room he had just escaped, his breath caught in his throat.
The doorway was a jagged mess of twisted metal and scorched wood. The changing room no longer existed—not as a room, not as a space. It was a blackened void of ruin. Broken tiles, charred fragments of benches, and warped pieces of furniture littered the ground. The overhead fluorescent lights had shattered, their tubes splintered like bone. Shadows danced along the walls—grotesque and shifting—cast by flickering flames that still burned along the edges of the destruction.
The scent hit him next: thick, choking smoke mixed with the sharp sting of burning plastic and fabric, and something else. Something acrid and unfamiliar. His lungs protested with every breath, and he brought his sleeve to his nose, gagging against the foulness that had replaced the sterile hospital air.
He stumbled forward a step, then another, until he had to brace himself against the wall. His stomach heaved, the nausea too overwhelming to hold back. He turned his head and vomited, the contents of his stomach hitting the floor with a sickening splatter.
When he finally looked back again, his legs barely holding him upright, one truth pressed into his mind like a dagger:
This wasn't an accident. It wasn't chance. That box had been sent to him for this.
And whatever had started… wasn't over.
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A wave of disorientation rolled over Sawyer like a crashing tide, threatening to pull him under. His knees buckled slightly, and he reached for the wall to steady himself, the cool surface grounding him amid the chaos. His mind was struggling—desperately—to make sense of what had just happened. His thoughts were jumbled, snagged on the sound of the explosion, the feel of heat against his skin, the sight of utter destruction.
He blinked hard, trying to clear the smoke-stung tears from his eyes, and stared down the corridor ahead. "Where is everybody?" he whispered, his voice raw and cracked, barely audible in the oppressive silence that now filled the hallway.
There was no answer.
Just the lingering echo of his words bouncing off the scorched, sterile walls.
He turned in place slowly, his gaze sweeping across what had once been a clean, brightly lit hospital corridor. Now the white walls were charred with soot, marked by violent streaks of fire and ash. The floor was littered with shattered glass, twisted metal, and chunks of debris from the blast. Even the ceiling tiles hung askew, sagging like weary shoulders under the weight of devastation.
He was alone.
Utterly alone.
That realization settled over him like a cold blanket. He was a solitary figure standing amidst the wreckage—small, fragile, and human in a place that now felt alien and unforgiving. Every breath he took carried the taste of smoke and fear.
But just as he began to take a tentative step forward, something shifted inside him. Not a thought—an instinct.
A prickling sensation crept along the back of his neck, and the fine hairs on his arms stood on end. It wasn't just the cold or the shock. It was something older. Deeper. The kind of warning your body gave you before your mind caught up. It whispered one truth with chilling clarity:
You are not alone.
He froze.
His eyes darted across the hallway again, this time slower, more deliberate. The silence no longer felt empty—it felt watched. There was something in the air, something unnatural. A low hum beneath reality itself. The kind of quiet that carried weight. The kind that made your heartbeat feel too loud in your chest.
Then he heard it.
A growl.
Low. Deep. Guttural.
It vibrated through the floor, resonated in his bones like the growl of something vast and angry—and very much alive. It came from within the ruins of the changing room, beneath the twisted mess of metal and scorched tile. The sound didn't belong to a human. It didn't even belong to something that should exist. It was primal, ancient, and hungry.
His heart slammed against his ribs as his eyes locked on the collapsed wreckage. Debris shifted with a slow groan of pressure being released, as if something beneath was beginning to move.
Then he saw it.
Not clearly—not yet—but something large. The unmistakable outline of a back, slowly rising from beneath the rubble, its form slick with soot and shadow. The figure was moving, uncoiling like a creature waking from a long, hateful sleep.
Sawyer couldn't breathe.
He couldn't think.
All he could do was stare as his mind screamed one silent truth that clawed through the fear and smoke:
Whatever was in that box… it survived.
From behind the flaming debris and smoldering lockers, it emerged—its form gliding into view like smoke coalescing into bone. This was no ordinary beast, no summoned demon from a spellbook or wandering shadow from the depths of the Hundred Worlds. This was something far older. A relic of blood-soaked dimensions long buried under reality's skin.
The creature stood like a dog, but no dog had ever looked like this.
Its blackened flesh stretched tight over an emaciated frame, revealing every contour of its bones, every sharp edge of malice that formed its unnatural shape. Ribs jutted outward, not as protection but as weapons, red cracks pulsing between them like veins filled with magma instead of blood. The glow within its chest throbbed rhythmically—like a heart that burned instead of beat.
And it shimmered.
Not like heat waves or illusions, but like a thing that wasn't entirely here, like it shifted between realities, its edges too soft one moment, then too sharp the next. The air around it bent subtly, warping in ways Sawyer couldn't explain. It was as if the creature didn't belong to this world—had never belonged—and the universe was struggling to reject its presence.
Then, it opened its eyes.
Its eyes—if they could be called that—were pits of seething crimson, twin furnaces locked in a perpetual scowl. They didn't blink. They didn't waver. They watched, as if memorizing Sawyer's soul one trembling breath at a time.
Twin orbs of burning crimson flared to life on its face—if it could even be called a face. There were no brows, no nose, no real mouth visible. Just those two glowing, malevolent eyes, set deep into the smooth expanse of its head. They pulsed like living embers, radiating hatred so thick it felt tangible, like smoke pressing into his lungs.
The creature stared at him.
Not glanced.
Stared.
Those blood-red eyes locked onto Sawyer with the piercing intensity of a hawk descending on a mouse. He felt it instantly—like a punch to the soul. A cold pressure in his chest, a clenching fear in his gut. It wasn't looking at him like a curiosity or even a threat.
It was looking at him like prey.
And that gaze… it didn't blink.
Didn't waver.
Each step it took left a smear of heat on the ground, molten cracks flaring beneath its clawed feet. The air warped around it, not from heat but from something worse—something hungry. Reality itself recoiled from its presence. Light dimmed. Shadows twisted.
It was as if the very act of being seen by this thing had weight. A suffocating, invisible force that pinned Sawyer in place, stealing the breath from his lungs and the thoughts from his mind. His heartbeat pounded loud and fast in his ears, his body trembling, rooted in place by a primal terror that logic couldn't quiet.
In that moment, every instinct screamed the same message:
Run.
But his feet wouldn't move.
His legs were ice.
Because somehow, in the deepest parts of him, Sawyer understood what that stare meant.
This wasn't just some beast dragged from hell or nightmare.
It was a hunter.
And it had found him.
Its limbs were impossibly long, stretched thin like the branches of a dead tree, each one ending in hands that looked more like claws than anything human. The fingers were grotesquely elongated, five in total, each tipped with a curved, black talon that gleamed even in the dim, flickering light. They caught the glow of the nearby fire—sharp and polished, like obsidian blades waiting to carve flesh. The sight sent an involuntary shudder through Sawyer's entire frame, his stomach clenching with a visceral dread he couldn't shake off.
Then it made a sound.
A low, guttural growl began to rise from deep within its chest, vibrating the air between them. The sound wasn't just noise—it was pressure, a dark vibration that seemed to reach beneath his skin and grip his bones. It rose steadily, growing louder, deeper, more feral—until it erupted into a roar so powerful it seemed to shake the hospital itself.
The entire corridor quivered.
Dust fell from broken ceiling tiles.
The overhead lights—already half-dead—flickered violently and went dark for a second, plunging everything into a flickering, hellish dance of fire and shadow. The roar didn't just echo—it consumed. It filled every crack in the hallway, twisted into every room, howling with such force that Sawyer stumbled backward, his hands instinctively covering his ears though it did little to dull the pain.
It wasn't just loud.
It was physical.
The sheer force of the sound stole his breath, punched the air from his lungs, and shattered the fragile composure he had been clinging to. There was no more room for logic or analysis. No time to understand what he was looking at or how it had gotten here.
Only one thing mattered now.
Survive.
His instincts roared louder than his fear.
Before his brain could even process the decision, Sawyer turned and ran, his body jolting into motion like a machine finally shocked to life. His boots pounded the tiled floor, each step a violent slap that echoed down the empty hallway. He didn't look back—he couldn't. Not because he didn't want to see the creature, but because a part of him knew that if he did, his legs might stop working altogether.
Behind him, he heard it.
The thudding rhythm of its pursuit.
Loud.
Heavy.
Uneven.
There was something fundamentally wrong about the way it moved—its steps didn't follow any natural cadence, didn't match the rise and fall of human or animal gait. It sounded like it was lurching, throwing its body forward with grotesque speed, its spindly limbs slamming against the floor like twisted stilts.
And it was fast.
Much faster than something so massive had any right to be.
Sawyer felt the presence behind him growing stronger, like a black wave pushing closer with every second. The air itself seemed to change—thicker, darker, charged with the malevolent energy that radiated from the thing chasing him.
His lungs burned.
His legs ached.
But terror pushed him harder.
He wasn't just running for his life.
He was running from a nightmare that had clawed its way into reality.
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Notes: The Hospital Safety Regulations would like to issue an updated advisory: In the event of unexpected explosions and/or the appearance of non-Euclidean entities, please evacuate the premises immediately. Do NOT attempt to engage. Seriously.