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Pain.
A piercing agony through her chest. Air tried to go into her lungs, but she couldn’t let it; she hadn’t been able to breathe for so long, a single breath could break the delicate shred of life she was still clinging onto. She remembered the fire, the smoke before anything else. It felt suffocating when it filled her small room. She didn’t care when she felt the heat as she ran through the house, she just needed to find somewhere without the smoke, she just needed to breathe. She dropped to the ground, there were a few inches lower down with fresher air. The smoke shredded her insides, the ash and soot made her think she’d never experience anything worse than the suffering the smoke was putting her through. How she longed for that feeling now.
How long had it been? It felt like hours. It felt like days. It was long enough she started to think about God. She hadn’t thought about God in a long time, not since she was little, not since her parents would take her to church every Sunday, read the bible to her every night. She loved the story of Lazarus, in the town of Bethany. Her parents named them after that story, her and her brother. They were twins. They were born together, they lived together. Bethany spoke to God for the first time in a long time. She begged him to make sure they didn’t die together too.
She remembered the ambulance less than the fire. She didn’t like to think about what they said around her name. Buried in rubble. Two hours before she was ‘saved’. A piece of wood piercing her lung. None of that really mattered anymore. Not as much as what they said around his name. Cuts from before the fire reopening. Serious head wound. Kept waking up and screaming before passing out, over and over again. She didn’t hear the screaming, he might not have been in the same place as her. But she could feel her ears bleeding from the sound. It was the only part she could still feel now. How she longed for that pain in the lungs again.
Her eyes were closed. The pain faded slowly, and as it did she started to feel the rest of her body; her nerves wrapped back around her bones as the meat of her muscles slowly crawled back around her. The pain started again as her skin grew out of her bare, charred flesh. The pain was more bearable now, she almost felt human again. She thought about her brother’s pain, God, she hoped it wasn’t as bad as anything she’s gone through in the past… How long had it been? Why does time feel like it matters again? Why is the pain moving uncomfortably around her body? Why is all of the pain in the chest and limbs moving outside of her body?
…
Why does her head hurt so much?
Bethany opened her eyes. She was laying on a dirty wood floor with a crack in the wood directly under her back. A rock was laid under her head and an old blue blanket was draped over her. She was staring up at the ceiling, a layer of wooden planks with a square drawn in the center. It almost looked like a crude drawing of a trapdoor? Looking around the rest of the room, Bethany noticed that there were a fairly large number of people in the relatively small room. All were sat alone with some sort of activity or grouped with another person or two. Sat next to her was a young, slightly pudgy girl with blonde curls and a red bow. She kneeled on the floor with a long piece of fabric across her legs and a sewing needle, which she rolled around in her fingers as she stared thoughtfully at the cloth.
On her other side was… Lazarus, he knelt beside her with his hands together and eyes closed, whispering what sounded like a prayer. His eyes opened and he smiled, he reached towards her very slowly and held her face. She couldn’t keep herself from crying. It had been an eternity since she’d seen him. He was alright, there were no cuts, no bandages, no machines or tubes for him to be hooked up to. It was strange to see him like this, she was so used to sitting beside him on his bed, making sure she didn’t accidentally step on any of the expensive equipment they had to buy to keep him at home instead of at the hospital. Now, he stared down at her and talked to her about how much he missed her, how grateful he was to God for making sure they were alright. Lazarus was always more religious than her, when she told him she didn’t believe any of that stuff anymore he seemed so upset, but he told her he understood, and they were still able to talk about it without it being a sore subject.
Bethany didn’t see how he could possibly be grateful to anyone after what he must have gone to get to the same place as her. She hoped that meant he had a better experience than her.
The other girl looked down to her and gently held out her hand.
“Hello! My name is Magdalene, but everyone calls me Maggie. Welcome to the Basement.”
The Basement ? Bethany took a moment to think about whether any religion’s afterlife was called ‘The Basement’ but decided that that was probably pretty stupid. Maggie stared down at her smiling, hand still held out. Bethany took it and asked the only real thing that came to mind, “am I dead?” Maggie shrugged, very helpful.
“I mean… maybe? We all died right before we got here, but I’m not sure if that means we’re actually dead. Honestly I usually just try not to think about it!” She was way too cheerful about this. “Now, how about you put on your new dress? I just made it for you, so it’s probably the cleanest thing here! Besides, I think Isaac is getting a little anxious without his blanky.”
It was only then that Bethany noticed two things: first of all, she was naked. She snatched the dress out of Maggie’s hand, and quickly ducked under the small blanket to pull the dress over her head. The second thing was that she seemed to have shrunk, her body was much smaller. In fact, she looked about as old as all the other children in the room; none of them could be older than ten, including Lazarus, who looked exactly the same as when he was in elementary school.
Maggie began explaining things to her in a way that sounded very rehearsed: How they were in a place with a lot of connected rooms, how every time they left the rooms changed and shifted, and how once you reached the end of the floor, there was a trapdoor down to the next one. She explained how the floors were full of monsters, flies and spiders and people with bleeding faces that walked around after they were dead. She remarked how there were special rooms on every floor, rooms that gave them items that made them more powerful, that made it easier to kill the stronger enemies at the end of each floor. She told Bethany how they had made it to three different areas so far - The Basement, The Caves, and The Depths - and she commented that the floors were different sometimes once you actually got to them. The basement may have flames licking at the walls or the depths might have black ooze dripping from the ceiling. Once Bethany thought she was done, she perked up again and added one last thing
“Oh! Yeah! And now there’s a weird door in the boss rooms! We don’t actually know where they go yet, but I guess you can help us find out!”
There was so much information to take in; she had to fight? Why were they here? How did they get here? She figured no one else had any more information than she did.
“Why do you go out there? To the floor with the monsters?”
Maggie shrugged again. “It’s not like we have much else to do here. plus, we’re Sometimes we're able to keep stuff from the runs so we can get things. That's how I got the material for your dress! And the needle and thread, of course.”
“Is that how you got your bow?”
Maggie reached up and touched the bow in her hair. “This came with me when I got here, I’ve always had it- like your pigtails! I think I wore it a lot before I was here.”
Bethany reached up and noticed that her hair was, in fact, tied up into two neat pigtails with light blue hair ties, the kind she always used to wear to keep the hair out of her face. She stood looking down at her new dress. The blue fabric already seemed quite worn and had a thin layer of dust over it. It had very short sleeves that covered her shoulders, and was long enough to brush against her ankles. She also noticed there were large pockets sewn onto the sides and back. She had never worn a dress with pockets before, but she never really wore dresses in general, so that made sense. Everyone else's clothing seemed similarly practical, lots of pockets and a lack of any patterns or styles, except for Maggie's own dress, which had the waist ever so slightly cinched and white polka dots breaking up the light pink fabric.
Maggie grabbed her hand and tugged her towards another group of people. “Really, the best way to explain everything is to just go through a run or two. Now c’mon! Oh, don’t forget your book!”
Maggie quickly shuffled over and picked up a book beside Bethany’s rock pillow. It was a very plain looking book, light blue with a white cross on the cover. Bethany didn’t even recognize it until Maggie handed it to her and she opened the cover. The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories, edited by William Bennett : a collection of fables, Shakespeare, bible verses, and other stories that her parents gave her when she told them she didn’t want to go to church anymore; it felt like kind of a slap in the face that it came here with her.
“Judas has a book too! I’ll ask him to go on a run with you to show you the ropes.”
In the group sat three people: the first was a girl with bright red hair with small horn peaking through, pitch black skin covered with bandages across most of her chest and down to her knees, as well as her eyes. She also had a small black creature in her lap, who she stroked like a cat as she talked.
The second was a boy with long brown hair and a red strip of cloth wrapped around his forehead. He wore what almost looked like a greek toga made out of green fabric, a gold ring on his shoulder holding it together.
The last was another boy wearing black pants, a white shirt, and a black cardigan. Despite having the most layers of anyone else she had seen, his hands were shaking as he flipped the pages of his book, his teeth chattering as he occasionally looked up to add something to the conversation. His hair was shaved on the sides and fluffy on top, kinda like a mohawk, and he had a braid at the back down to his upper back. The style had a name, but it wouldn’t come to mind, rat’s nest or a mouse tail or something like that… whatever. Completing his look, he wore a red fez with a yellow string.
“Judas! I want you to help show the newbie around, okay?”
The boy with the fez looked up from his book and grimaced.
“right now? I think I almost have one of these pages.”
“Yes, right now! She’ll die to the first gaper she sees if she doesn’t have someone to help her! And who better than the big, strong demon boy!”
Judas rolled his eyes at this and stood, closing his book.
“Fine, but she’s not allowed to freak out on me.” He turned to Bethany, “got it?”
Bethany nodded quickly. She just learned monsters exist and is standing next to a girl with skin the color of charcoal and horns, and she hardly had a reaction to either. She hoped her general apathy to the situation so far would help her a bit with ‘demon boy ’.
Judas sighed and walked towards one of the doors. Bethany quickly followed him out. As they exited, Bethany remembered Lazarus and turned to offer that he could come with them, but the door was gone. Her and Judas were alone in an empty room, two doors stood on either side of them, and a door with a golden frame in front of her.
“Where’s the door? Where’s Lazarus?”
Judas’ eyebrow rose. “Who?”
“My brother, Lazarus, the boy that arrived here with me. I was gonna ask him to come with us, but the door is gone. Where did everyone go?”
Judas sighed deeply again, as if annoyed. “We’re in a run now, we can’t go back until we win or lose. We’ll be right back after one of those happens. Besides, Cain offered to go on a run with the boy, they were just waiting for you to wake up.”
Bethany felt a small pang of guilt for not talking to Lazarus more before she left. “So how do we win?”
“We’re not going to win, we’re going to die. But if you’re good at this, we might die on a later floor and bring more stuff back to everyone.”
“We’re going to die ?” Bethany practically yelled in surprise.
“God, relax, we don’t actually like… y’know, die die. We get beat up enough, it hurts like hell, then we fall out of the trapdoor in room with everyone else. Well, everyone probably won’t be there when we get back, we were all just there to make sure you guys actually woke up and saw there were other people there.”
“Oh… well. I guess that's reassuring?”
“Yep, the only person who’s won is Isaac. Which is kinda weird, considering he was the youngest before coming here.” Judas paused for a moment, “how old are you?”
“Fifteen, how old are you?”
“Seventeen, I think I’m the oldest. Which is really stupid, since I’m one of the shortest people here. But, anyways, we should get started. What does your item do?” He pointed to the book of virtues, it glowed in her hand, a bright solid ring around the book.
“Oh, I, uh- I’m not sure? It just came here with me, I don’t know if it actually does anything.”
“Open the book, read a few lines of it maybe.”
She opened the book somewhere in the middle, to ‘
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
’, and began to read it. She barely got to the boy receiving his rabbit doll for Christmas before she started to feel very warm, right in the middle of her forehead. After a few more words, it started to feel hot, very hot. It started to burn, like a migraine, she tried to keep reading, but the pain was practically unbearable. And then it stopped. It floated out of her forehead. The pain only there for a moment, it seemed so inconsequential, so brief. The relief of it leaving had so much more of an effect than the pain itself. And then, in front of her sat a small blue wisp of fire floated, slowly circling around her.