The Moon, chapter 36: Unforgotten

Susie had to sit down for a moment, both to keep herself from falling into the elevator shaft due to a sudden lightheaded feeling, and to let everything she just saw sink in. She began to think of plans to ascend the shaft. If she were to regain her strength, and perhaps got some gloves to help grip the cables, she could climb up that way.  That seemed incredibly risky, however, as any slip up could very well send her tumbling into the sea. Unlike last time, there was no one left to save her. She looked around the shaft cautiously, trying to look for any way whatever brought her here would've got here in the first place. She found nothing, leaving her with only two possibilities. Either whatever kidnapped her climbed all the way up the elevator shaft manually, or it flew. She wasn't sure if she preferred either possibility.

Regardless, there was no way for her to ascend it at the moment, so her only option was to head back to the prison cell hallway. She wanted anything but to be back there, but she had no other options at this point. Susie walked back to the door, wondering if the shadowy figure who let her out of her cell was on her side, or only following orders. Maybe there was no order here after all, and simply a food chain. Whatever had killed that prisoner a few hours back was surely near the top. She opened the door, and immediately felt a familiar sick feeling creep into her. The fleshy, almost crimson colored walls gave off an incredibly unwelcome feeling. She did not belong here, not in the slightest.

Susie made the same precautions as before. To keep her eyes ahead, away from the prison cells, and to try not to step in the puddle of remains and blood. The shadowy figure was gone, though the darkness at the top of the long hallway remained. With he figure no longer blocking her vision, however, she was able to see what rested at the other side of the hallway. The walls on the left and right expanded into a much wider area that had a large, bronze set of double doors with multiple etched markings on their surface. She stepped closer to the doors, ignoring the sparse breathing and yelling from the cells next to and above her.

She reached the wider, more spacious area, feeling the claustrophobic sense fade a little. Next, she began to examine the doors. The majority of their surface was covered in scratch marks of varying sizes, some creating nothing but faint white marks, while others leaving incredibly large gashes in the solid bronze colored metal. Susie hoped that whatever left those marks was something she wouldn't have to encounter. In the middle of the doors, near the top of the door frame, was an insignia of a moon. Susie was only barely able to make this out, because a large X drawn in old, dark red blood was stained upon the symbol, and it looked to have been scratched heavily. It seemed that the inhabitants of this place had the same resentment towards the moon that she did.

The fear of what could be in wait on the other side of this door was outweighed by her determination to get out  Susie placed her hands upon the cold metal of the door, and pushed them open. The piercing metal squealing that followed caused her to squint a little, looking through the ever increasing crack between the doors before realizing that a tall figure was sprinting towards her. Susie immediately covered her face with her arms in a weak attempt to protect herself, stopping the squealing in the process. When Susie felt nothing attack her, she lowered her arms a bit to see what the figure actually was that sprinted towards her.

A tall, almost skeletal half silhouette stood at the doorway. It was at least twice Susie's size, reaching nearly to the top of the door frame. Its head took the shape of a bird skull, the beak of said skull being a dark brown while the rest of its head, much like the rest of its body, was a pale white. Its torso wore the weathered remains of what looked like a white shirt, now stained with various shades of red, coupled with a horribly ripped up and unfitting gray undershirt. Its legs were, fittingly, bird-like in nature, its talons being a brown shade, not unlike its beak. What got Susie the most was its eyes, however. They were a pale, radiant white with small darker spots littered randomly along their surface, striking quite the resemblance to the moon-like eyes of the decaying red creature from the ash world.

Once the metal squealing had stopped, so had the bird thing's sprint. It cocked its head to the side, its entire body shaking for a bit before it turned around, returning to the room and whatever business it had been partaking in before. Susie cautiously stepped inside, and observed her surroundings. The room was large, so large in fact that her footsteps echoed across it. The shape was circular, and to her left and right were two large brass doors identical to the one she just opened. The smell of this room caught her off guard, though it wasn't incredibly strong, the stench of death and decay was as present as ever. The eye catcher, along the source of the smell, was in the middle of the room. Behind the bird creature was a large, circular marble fountain, nearly filled to the brim with a red substance Susie had assumed to be blood. Around the outer perimeter of the fountain were body parts of various shapes and sizes, rotting and stewing in the pool. From the pool crept the glowing flesh that Susie had seen around the area, sticking to the outside of the pool and spreading out to every part of the building. It seemed that she found the source of the living flesh.

In the middle of the fountain was a statue made out of various parts of flesh and bone, amalgamating into a huge, horrid humanoid skeleton with six arms. In place of a head was a gray moon made out of stone, split in half down the middle and being held in place by one set the skeleton's hands. The moon sculpture leaked blood, which fell down the skeleton's body and back into the pool below. How the blood made it back up to the moon was unknown to Susie. Another set of arms was held up to the sky, as if it was to catch something in its hands, or perhaps in some sort of prayer. The last set of hands were pointed downward and to its front, cupping its hands together as if it was offering something. The entire twisted structure was lit by a dim orange light in the ceiling that came through a box shaped hole. When she got closer to the fountain, and thus closer to the hole in the ceiling, she looked upward. There was a room up there, lit up by lights that she couldn't see. What she heard next immediately made her mind go into overdrive, thinking of the horrific implications and possibilities of escape the revelation had gave her.

The low pitched, distorted singer droned on.

“Never forget-
Never forget-
Never forget-
Never forget-
Never forget-”

...And she never did.