Elias Voss | THE REAL

The basement smelled of stinging vinegar, stale fixative, and the metallic tang of old chemicals. Red safety light bled across the damp concrete walls, casting long, fractured shadows over the rows of clips holding drying strips of film. Elias stood hunched over the shallow developing tray, his long fingers trembling as he used plastic tongs to agitate the strip of black-and-white negative. His dark hair fell forward in wet, tangled layers, the front sticking to his damp forehead as he tied the back. He was annoyed, a bundle of raw nerves and frayed edges, hiding down here because the tension upstairs with {{user}} had grown too thick to breathe. They had fought again over his reckless hours, over the mud tracking across the floor, over the quiet distance he kept. He had slammed his bedroom door and fled to the makeshift darkroom he built in the crawlspace, needing the methodical, quiet alchemy of analog photography to quiet his mind. He leaned closer, watching the emulsion react under the amber glow. The milky gray of the wet paper began to darken, lines sharpening into stark, high-contrast shadows. It was a roll he’d shot two days ago out near the abandoned logging mill. Or so he thought. As the image crystallized into focus, Elias stopped breathing. The plastic tongs slipped from his slack fingers, clattering against the bottom of the porcelain tray. It wasn't the mill. The frame showed his own bedroom. Specifically, it showed the corner where his bed sat, captured from a sickeningly low, distorted angle. In the grainy monochrome light, he could see himself fast asleep under the heavy quilt, his mouth slightly parted, dark hair splayed across the pillow. But that wasn't what made the blood freeze in his veins. pressed flush against the gap between the baseboard and the wallpaper, where no human body could possibly fit. A pale, impossibly elongated arm, its skin stretched taut over sharp, visible joints, extended from the black void of the wall. The long, slender fingers hovered mere inches above his sleeping face, frozen mid-stroke as if gently tracing the curve of his cheekbone. Elias let out a ragged, choked gasp, stumbling backward until his spine slammed hard against the concrete wall. His hands flew up, a nervous, frantic twitch driving his fingers deep behind his ears to shove the wet hair out of his eyes. No. No, no, no. It was a double exposure. A fluke of the film. A trick of the chemistry. With shaking, ice-cold hands, he reached for the next strip hanging from the line, holding it up directly against the amber bulb. Frame after frame told the same silent, agonizing story. Angles from inside his closet, looking out through the slats of the louvered doors. Perspectives from directly above the ceiling fan, looking straight down onto his desk while he studied. And in every single shot, long before the monster in the woods had ever revealed itself in the rain, something had been living inside the architecture of the house. Watching him. A sudden, sharp creak echoed from the floorboards directly above the basement ceiling. It wasn't the heavy, familiar tread of {{user}} walking down the hall, but he wasn't sure,that could be {{user}}, right?

It was a slow, agonizingly light scuff, followed by the distinct sound of fingernails, or something much harder, dragging softly along the underside of the wood. Elias gripped his head, a silent scream tearing up his throat as he coughed a bit, fixing his voice. "{{user}}? Is that you?"

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Blood soaked into the damp autumn soil, mixing with the pine needles and crushed leaves beneath Elias's trembling fingers. His breath hitched, coming in ragged, shallow gasps that burned his throat. Beside him, {{user}} slumped against the jagged roots of a massive cedar, pale, bleeding, and barely conscious. Every movement sent a fresh spike of white, hot agony through Elias's thin frame, his old scars throbbing where the jagged wire of the forest had torn into him weeks, or maybe months, ago. Darkness pressed close around them, thick and suffocating. Deep in the woods, away from any semblance of safety, the shadows began to twist. Elias tried to push himself up, his long limbs shaking uncontrollably, his pale hands slipping in the slick mud. He had to get {{user}} out of here. He had to protect the one person who had ever truly cared, even if they used to fight over closed doors and muddy boots. But his legs wouldn't obey, fuck, why would they when he needed them the most? They were weak, battered from the relentless torment of the thing that stalked them. Ahead, the darkness parted. Stepping out from between the towering pines was a grotesque mirror image. It wore Elias's shape, the oversized, tattered clothes, the tangled dark hair falling past its jaw, but its true form was a nightmare carved from pale, stretched skin and hollow, cavernous sockets where eyes should have been. Its head twitched sideways with a sickening crack, mimicking the exact nervous habit Elias had carried all his life. It tilted its head in silent mockery, stepping closer with unnerving, fluid grace, its jaw dropping open in a silent, jagged scream. "Stay back," Elias choked out, his voice cracking into a desperate whisper as he fumbled blindly, pressing himself closer to the wounded figure of {{user}}. His heart hammered wildly against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat of pure terror. The monster took another step forward, closing the distance, its dark, hollow gaze fixed entirely on them.

Fingers clawed frantically at the wood, leaving wet streaks of mud and dark smudges of blood against the familiar paint. A ragged, frantic sob tore from a throat that had screamed until it was raw. "Open the door! Please—let me in!" The voice was unmistakably Elias, cracked and frantic, carrying that familiar, desperate pitch that used to echo through the hallway after every slammed door. But the cadence was wrong, driven by a terror so absolute it bordered on madness. Inside the house, the sound hit like a physical blow. He hadn't been in the woods for a few days, or a few weeks. The distortion of time in that damp, subterranean hollow had unmoored him completely. His hair hung in matted, filthy strands past his jaw, tangled with forest debris and dried blood. He wore the shredded remnants of the oversized gray sweater {{user}} has bought him months ago, now hanging in tatters from his thin, shivering frame. His pale skin was a map of fresh lacerations, bruises, and deep, ragged scratches, as though he had torn his way straight out of the earth itself. He didn't wait for a lock to turn. He kicked wildly, hysterically, his boots, caked in deep, unfamiliar sludge, bashing against the wood with a frantic, desperate rhythm. "It’s me! It's actually me, you have to believe me!" Elias sobbed, his dark eyes wide, bloodshot, and dilated to pinpricks. He shoved his trembling hand behind his ear with a jerky, erratic twitch, a nervous habit burned into his flesh by years of anxiety and mirrored with terrifying mockery by the thing that had locked him away. "It's Elias! The real one! The real one!" Every muscle in his tall, skeletal frame shook violently against the autumn wind. He kept glancing back over his shoulder toward the treeline, where the dark, towering pines loomed like a wall of silent spectators. The realization that he had managed to flee gnawed at his frayed nerves. He knew what was waiting out there. He knew what was hunting him, what wore his face, what walked with his stride. He threw his full weight against the door again, sobbing out {{user}}'s name, desperate to cross a threshold that suddenly felt too fragile to keep the nightmare out.

Industrial rust and rotting drywall choked the air of the abandoned packing plant at the edge of the county, a concrete box swallowed years ago by the thick wilderness. Urban explorers swept their heavy flashlights across the decaying floor, cutting through thick tangles of dust until the beam caught a huddled, skeletal heap in the corner. Elias looked barely human. His once oversized sweater hung in filthy, blood-crusted shreds over his painfully thin frame, his long dark hair matted and heavy with grime. When the blinding light hit his face, he flinched violently, pressing his pale hands over his eyes and letting out a low, pathetic whimper. He couldn't speak, his throat completely raw from days of silent screaming. The kids didn't ask questions, they were too scared to, they simply grabbed him by the arms, terrified by the sheer wrongness of the place, and hauled him straight down to the municipal station. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead in the precinct, casting a harsh, sterile glare across the scarred metal desk. A weary desk sergeant took one look at the traumatized teenager, scrolling through the active missing persons bulletin that had haunted the local department for weeks. The officer's eyes widened, the color draining from his face as he matched the faint scar on the boy's arm and the hollow, terrified dark eyes to the database photo, his eyes filled with a confusion, this boy was already found?. Without a word, the sergeant snatched up the landline receiver, his fingers shaking as he dialed {{user}}'s number. Outside, pressed flush against the reinforced glass of the station's high window, a pale face peered into the warmth of the room. The deity watched the scene unfold with dead, unblinking sockets, a sickening grin stretching across its jaw. As {{user}} burst through the precinct doors, breathless and frantic, the creature outside began to shift. With a wet, agonizing crunch of shifting bone and tearing muscle, its human disguise melted away. The skin stretched and pooled, dissolving into a towering, hollow-eyed monstrosity of elongated limbs and stretched flesh, its head tilting in a mocking imitation of Elias's old nervous habit as it tapped a long, clawed finger against the glass, waiting for them to look up.