All Ends With Beginnings

You finally made it to Saxon Avenue.

Only to be greeted by a large wall running through the alley ways and across the street, blocking you from the building.

“Looks like I will have to find another way around...again.” You sigh and turn around intending to walk around the block and to the back.

”You will not find a way in that way.”

You stopped.

”That way is blocked as well.”

Not again. You couldn’t believe you were saying this but please, PLEASE, not again. You didn’t want a repeat of last time in the park.

You turned around to face Anonymous. You were going to have to be calm.

“Anonymous?”

He was standing on top of the large wall.

”You somehow managed to survive both the hospital and the shop. You’re persistent. But I told you, you need to leave.”

“Yes, I did survive. And it was hard for me to do so. I in fact came very close to being ripped open.”

”But you’re not.” He spat back.

“You say that as if it is somehow a problem.”

”It IS a problem!”

“Why? Why would me being okay be a problem to you! Are we not close friends Anon?”

”I don’t even know you! Just leave! I don’t want you here!”

“Anonymous that...t-that really hurts!”

”How the fuck do you think I feel? You being here prolongs the problem! Having to live through this all again when I have already found a way out of here is such bullshit. All I can do is hope you are consumed by this place or you…” Anon shook his head. “I don’t want others hurting because of me, I just want to be left in peace!”

“ANONYMOUS! I am here to HELP you with your problems! If you don’t tell me how I can NOT!”

”God...DAMN IT! Can’t you see what I’m doing? If this is all too much for you, you should just FUCKING LEAVE! If you can’t find an exit, just leave, like I did!”

“That does not make any sense! And even if it did, if you did that before, why can’t you just do it again?”

Anonymous hesitated. He seemed to get a little anxious.

”I...I don’t think it works like that. You can’t do that twice.”

“Have you even tried? What did you do?”

Anonymous put a hand up to the back of his head, you assumed where that wound you first saw in the school was.

“Anon...Anon what did you do to escape the first time?!”

Anonymous lowered his hand and looked back down at you. He looked almost saddened by something.

“Anonymous?”

He furrowed his brow and pointed to the building next to you.

”If you go through there...you’ll learn what ever you need to know, and hopefully find a way out, or forced out. If not, then it will lead to the back of the apartments I-I need to leave.”

You were about to call out to him, but, knowing the previous encounters, you knew it would have been pointless. Why did he look so upset when you asked him how he got out? A bad feeling began to swim around in your stomach.

What did he do? And why was he helping you all of a sudden? You looked toward the building Anon pointed towards.

”Incognito Psychiatric Clinic.”

Why was a mental clinic so close to Anon’s place?

Oh.

You recalled back to why Anon wasn’t fired from his job. The call from his doctor. He also must have set up Anon’s living arrangement. You really were not keen on going into another building. But it seems as though you had no other choice. You approached the door and let out a deep sigh. Anon apparently wanted you dead, left at the mercy of those creatures.

He seemed to be in pain just by you being here, and claims to not know you. You hesitated.

This...thing, that claimed to be Anonymous, or at the very least looked a lot like him, wanted you gone. In some way. Whether you found a way out, died, or “made your way out.” You still didn’t like the sound of that.

He also apparently has no memory of you. So, is he even really Anonymous? Should you trust him?

khm

mmmhmhmhmhmmkkkkkkkk

Your temples flared again. Another headache. You looked at the door. Regardless, you really had no other option. If he wasn’t the Anon you knew, the Anon who was your closest friend, the one you loved, then that meant your Anonymous was still in trouble.

If he was Anonymous, then you had to find out why he was acting so strange. Why his actions seemed to make NO SENSE.

And the last obstacle between you and your, hopefully, final location, was this clinic. You took in a deep breath, held it and let it out slow. You furrowed your brow, grit your teeth, and pushed the door open.

The inside of the clinic looked no different than the rest of the buildings in the city. Dark and rundown. There was a waiting room, a counter, and a door that lead to the offi------ceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

.anav ainmos irgeA !ciH

Your head throbbed in pain. You SWORE you could hear whispers. You shook your head and looked forward. First things first. Find the rear exit. You walked through to the offices and proceeded onward.

Subverting expectations, while there WERE holes in the wall, and the wooden beams were rotting, the usual sour stench and mold were not to be found. Sure, a musk was heavy in the air, but not of mold.

The usual black splotches were instead replaces by incoherent scribbling on random areas of the walls in various sizes and clusters, separated from each other by a considerable margin. They all seemed to be about different things.

Some were sayings about some God that was foreign to you. Others were about time. Others seemed more personal and called out to family members or friends.

You didn’t bother paying close attention to them. You resigned to following the exit signs. You could still hear the same whispers from when you first walked in. More disjointed from before. A dull pain radiated in the back of your skull. You must have finally started to go insane.

CiH

ciH

irgeA

ciH

anaV

icH icH icH icH icH icH icH

You rubbed the back of your head and pressed onward. Finally you reached the exit and pushed against the door.

“Locked. As expected.”

You turned around to go back the way you came.

“I suppose it is now time for me to...huh!”

You were...back in the waiting room? But, all you did was turn around. You looked back behind you. The door to the offices remained closed.

“How in the name of the maker!”

You darted your head around. Looking for anything else out of the ordinary. You spun around back to the offices door. You slowly approached it and peered through. The hallway looked the same...you thought. There did appear to be more writing.

You walked through the door once again, checking to make sure you really didn’t close it and walked again through the hallways. The whispering and migraine seemed to have calmed down now. You tried to open a few of the doors, most of them were locked. One door you opened, revealed an office with all of the furniture slammed against the wall and just staying there.

As if gravity didn’t affect it what so ever. The chairs, lamps, and tables were just glued to the right most wall. You walked down the corridor, you were about to take a right when something caught your attention.

A clump of hair. Purple hair to be exact.

“This is peculiar.”

You wouldn’t have bat an eye at it if it weren’t for the fact you knew humans didn’t have purple hair naturally. Orange or red on rare occasions, but purple? There seemed to be a trail of them.

You followed, those few strands seemed to give way to a pile of purple and pink hairs, sometimes covered in blood.

“By the maker...Twilight Sparkle must have been here.”

Those were the colors of her mane and tail, and if you recalled, half of her tail was missing. The tiny splotches gave way to a trail of smeared blood all the way down the hall. Down the hall to a door with a red hoof print on it.

No doubt in your mind now. Twilight must have been here. The trail stopped at this door however. This one must not have been locked. You opened it and pushed your head through. Everything in here seemed to be on the floor, as it should.

You entered and approached the desk in the center. A box with buttons on it laid on the desk. It was one of those new tape recorder things. There were buttons for rewind, fast forward, play, stop, and record. Curious, you hit the rewind button until the tape stopped winding and pressed play.

”Let’s see here, Alright, should be working. Hope Dr. Hash is right about these things. Ahem. Dr. Hill, September 26th, year 2019 of our lord. I will be keeping these audio logs as a way of note taking. My arthritis has been getting in the way of me keeping written and typed notes, so a fellow colleague here in the clinic was kind enough to give me one of his old tape recorders. Honestly, I’m surprised the damn thing still works. Anyways, I wish to record my thoughts on a recent patient. Anonymous. He was brought in here by the daughter of a patient of mine who had recently just passed away, bless her soul, with complaints of feeling anxious, and a lack of motivation. During a session I can already see what he is referring to. He shows visible signs of both anxiety and depression, I’ve decided that I’d be taking him as another personal patient and have already scheduled future visits. During one of our two previous sessions he claims he was put on probation by his boss at work and I decided to intervene. The man was very...irritable, but conceded in taking Anonymous off of probation and striking a written warning off of his record. Speaking to the fellow psychiatrists in the clinic they ask why I haven’t given him some pills to help with his problems already. I was, understandably, taken aback by this. I understand the ease and how common it is to just throw some Prozac or Celexa at a patient and call it a day until our next meeting, but I never believed in throwing drugs at a problem so quickly. I’ve been in this field for 36 years! Drugs alone can’t be expected to help a person. They should be used as another option, as an auxiliary to other methods. I don’t even need the studies, which are good to have don’t get me wrong, but I’ve had amazing success by offering far more practical solutions. A few cases, I didn’t even need to prescribe pills. Falling back to Anonymous, his story is very intriguing to me. Another patient who doesn’t like to open up, but the allusions he makes just peak my interest. I will be creating more audio logs in the months to come to document Anonymous and his progress.”

With a click and some mechanical movements inside the machine, the tape stopped. So this Dr. Hill figure was Anon’s doctor. You grabbed the tape recorder and placed it in your bag, it may come in handy later.

You rummaged through the doctor’s desk. You found a key, but it wasn’t the exit key. It was to the office of that Dr. Hash previously mentioned in the tapes. Placing it in your bag you left the desk and opened the door back into...a janitors closet?

You peaked your head inside and looked around. Yep, this was a janitorial closet. Filled with cleaning liquids, a faucet, mop, etc.

You backed out of the closet again and closed the door. Maybe you opened the wrong one? You circled back toooooo the hallway?

You were back in the hallways of the clinic. You really didn’t like what this building was doing. Were you dropping in and out of consciousness? Were you being teleported around?

You scanned the hallways to look for the hair trail and Dr. Hill’s office. You seemed to be in a completely different part of the building. Well, whether you were being transported around instantly, or fading seamlessly from one moment of awareness to another, you had better find this Dr. Hash’s office really soon.

You choose a hallway and started walking down. The writing on the wall was beginning to get very...dark.

”Wars, the horror of mothers.”

”Robert, Robert I’m sorry! Please do not blame me for the death of our child! I did it, I did it but it wasn’t me! Possession overtakes us all at a point!”

”Ah, human cares! Ah, how much futility in the world!”

”We crawl and slide through this world. We are but faceless nobodies holding a candle to guide ourselves through days as dark as night, and nights as blinding as days. We loose the wick and from our mouths we spew the bile within us that keeps us human. Now we twitch and thrash, lost monsters in the dark, in pain.”

”Why does Mommy lie to daddy about the men who keep visiting us? They keep saying they are mommy’s friends, but then they go into the bedroom and start to hit mommy. I can hear her screaming.”

You had to stop there. It was too haunting, and distracting you from your goal. You notice a black rectangle on a metal tray resting in one of the hallways.

A white label was taped on its side. The writing on it read, ”Dr. Hill October 3rd, 2019.”

You placed it into your bag. You’d have to listen to it later. You began reading the names on the doors as you passed them.

Walters, Shoemaker, Jackson, Nguyen, Fuchs.

Hash!

You pulled out the key to his office and slid it into the door. A heavy thud was heard down the hallway to your right. You shot a glare down the corridor, a shadow was making a move towards the intersection you were near.

“Moonrocks.”

You quickly turned the key and shot into the room. You made sure you closed the door quietly and locked it.

You backed away slowly as the sounds of movement out side the door began to grow louder. From underneath the door you could see the moving shadows of the feet of whatever was wandering the halls with you stop at the door. You held your breath.

Your vision began to be filled with odd lines and vibrating grains.

A horrible static hissing began to assault your eardrums. You splayed your ears back and backed away further from the door.

Your migraine came back with full force, you grunted slightly as you squeezed your temples between your hooves. The whispers joined soon after.

.roignol tif silam des tse ativ aspi siverB

You stared at the shadows from underneath the door. Eventually, a loud groan, akin to what you’d hear from two giant pieces of machinery rubbing against each other shook the walls of the building. The shadows began to move again, and the thudding resumed, eventually getting further and further away. And with them, the horrible clouded vision and whispers. Even the pain began to subdue itself.

Gasping, you leaned against the desk to collect yourself. Once your head stopped spinning and your breathing came back down to a normal rate, you began to inspect the area of Dr. Hash’s desk. Another tape, this time dated October 12th.

Desk first. You rummaged through.

A note to Dr. Hill about not leaving his tapes around the clinic.

…

Makes sense as to why you found a tape just lying on a tray.

A key! This one was too the front desk area of the clinic. If previous situations were to go off of, the front desk area probably had a key to the exit Painkillers! You dropped those into your bag. Nothing else in the desk though. Tape time it looks like.

You took out the tape recorder and set it on the desk. Ejecting the previous tape, you levitated out the tape you found in the hallway and placed it into the player. Closing the tape into place, you pressed play.

”Dr. Hill, October 3rd, 2019. I’ve gotten to speak with Anonymous again today. We have a regular check up twice a week. Not the most frequent patient, however he’s increasingly proving himself to be the most interesting. I’ve managed to get a basic over view of his life story, finally. Those three decades as a psychiatrist are really starting to pay off I guess. Heh. I’m proud to have had a mentor like my professor. If he wasn’t dead I’d be thanking him everyday for turning me to Carl Jung and his work. How interesting it is to read deep into the psychological and philosophical work of a man such as him. Though I can gush about my idols at a later date. On Anonymous, he has come to me with new developments. He claims to be seeing things. Things he knows aren’t there. Several tests and an episode during one of our sessions have pushed me to add ‘light psychosis’ to his list of problems. The good news is, medication does seem to be helping. Despite what I believe, I don’t think medication is nonsense. I understand and support its use. I simply believe it’s abused these days is all. Anyways, Anonymous has apparently been slacking in applying the methods I’ve given him to help with his anxiety and depression. I’ve had to arrange his living conditions to be in the building right next door to us so it’d be easier on both me and him to visit each other. He prefers for me to see him at his apartment. I am not against doing such things, I already do it for a few patients. His apartment on another note, is littered with bottles of alcohol and cigarette butts. Relatively free of any other garbage however. I’ve had to stress that alcohol can cause adverse side effects to the medication I’ve given him, which he’s taken to account by drinking less of it...for a while. He doesn’t meditate like I’ve asked him too. He says when he tries he only seems to focus on the guilt he feels over his mother. When I’ve asked him on the hobbies he’s picked up, he says he still plays the guitar and is learning how to play the piano but refuses to give a demonstration. I suspect he is lying to me, though I can not say for certain. He apparently had to get rid of this stray dog he had found, which bugged me since it seemed to be helping immensely with his anxiety. The most effective treatment so far are our little talks. However Anonymous is becoming more and more insistent that he wants more of the pills. I understandably refused...at first. But decided, against my own better judgment, to prescribe him more antidepressants anyways with the promise he’d throw away ALL of his alcoholic beverages. I had to remind him to only take the correct dosage. He said he would comply. I remain suspicious.”

The tape stopped there. Anonymous was seeing things? Could that be what inspired this whole thing? You knew and understood he was taking medication for depression and getting help for his anxiety. You had to know more. You popped the tape currently in the player out and replaced it with the one on Dr. Hash’s desk. You pressed play.

”Dr. Hill, October 12th, 2019. Bad news...good news. Bad news is that apparently Anonymous and his friend Claire, the daughter of my late patient, have had a falling out. I don’t understand as to why, neither will give me details. As nosy as I feel, I can’t be having things like these interrupt my progress with Anonymous. However, that may not matter anymore. Good news! A revelation, which I had not thought of before. Cognitive therapy! I was speaking recently to a colleague from Sweden I had met sometime ago at a conference who had his own patient with similar problems as Anonymous. He’s told me that he’s been making decent progress in learning the problems of his patient after giving him a book and asking him to write down all of his problems. So, that’s what I did with Anonymous! And how glad I am that I did. Not only have I been able to see deeper into Anonymous’ mind than before, but I am now able to talk about Jung! See, the way Anonymous writes shows signs of him trying to reconcile what in Jungian psychology we call the self, the ego, and the shadow. I’ve had to ask him if he has ever read any of Jung’s work, perhaps in school, and he says he hasn’t. I was gobsmacked! Not to mention the way he’s been dealing with his problems is interesting as well. We have another session tomorrow, I will be asking him how the book has been treating him! I hope- knock knock. Yes? Come in! What about Anonymous...what happened? My god...nurse, go and fetch Dr. Hash for me, I mus-”

The tape stopped there. You could feel your heart drop. What on earth caused him to act like that? What happened to Anon! You stared at the recorder on the desk for what felt like hours. Hundreds of dark thoughts running through your head. None of which could really be true...could they?

…

The hallways seemed to be getting longer. The writing has become so numerous and clustered together that the walls had nearly been painted red. You can’t even read what’s been written anymore. The horrible feeling in your stomach hasn’t gone away. SOMETHING happened to Anon, and you didn’t know what. Maybe if you found him and calmed him down you’d be able to solve this mess. Find out what happened and help him through it.

*knock knock knock knock*

You jumped and backed against the wall.

*knock knock knock*

Something behind one of the doors you were walking past began wrapping against it. A quite sobbing could be heard from beyond it.

You swore you could make out words, but the presumed trembling of lips made it impossible to make out. Staying around would probably just cause misfortune. You sped up to almost cantering away from the door. The front office shouldn’t be too far away if the signs are to be believed. Get to the front office, get the key that was hopefully there, get out. Then you could go to Anon’s apartment and finally get out of here.

You were so close. You finally turned down the hallway that led back to the waiting area. The door to the office was right there. Before reaching the door you found another tape lying on the ground. You stopped and inspected it.

This one didn’t have a date at all on it.

”Vixit.”

Hm. What did that mean? You placed it in your bag.

You approached the door and unlocked it. Entering the room, you noticed the papers scattered about everywhere. Chairs flipped over, a moldy sandwich half eaten. There was no writing in this room however.

Strange. You walked over to the desk and rummaged through it. Nothing in here. The next drawer had nothing either. You walked over to the next desk and rummaged through it.

“What is this?”

You pulled out a small object in the shape of an ‘L’.

It had a narrow barrel and the broad short end of it had a hole you assumed something was supposed to go into. It had a loop and a small trigger inside of it.

There was a tag written on the broad side.

”For emergencies only.”

You placed the two objects in your bag and continued searching around the office. More of those small boxes with screens were on each desk. Boards with letters on them sat in front.

Human technology was a fascinating thing you were beginning to regret not asking Anonymous more about before coming here. They must have been useful for something, perhaps these things could have cut the amount of time you had to spend here in half.

You scanned the walls.

A key rack!

But...no keys.

You couldn’t find a key anywhere in this office! You let out an irritated huff.

“Well, while I am here. Might as well listen to this new tape.”

You ejected the previous tape from the player and placed in the one labeled “Vixit”, and pressed play.

“OH! BY THE MAKER!”

You had to cover your ears. Horrible scratching and mechanical whirring filled the room you were in. It was like industrial nails on a metal chalkboard. Soft wet sounds were overlaping the horrible metallic screeching.

You stopped the tape and ejected it. Throwing it across to the other side of the room.

“Well. That was pointless.” You sighed and took in your surroundings again.

Your luck on just finding keys in the front area of a building had run out it looked like. Maybe if you went back to either of the doctors’ offices you’d find a-

A loud thud could be heard from back in the hallways, right outside the door.

“Moonrocks.”

You backed away from the door, slowly, hoping whatever was out there wouldn’t realize you were in here and would leave again.

The grainy vision and loud scratching noises came back, along with the migraine.

The whispering was louder this time, you would have described them as almost screaming if it wasn’t for their hushed nature.

.tauqea srom ainmO

A loud bang and the door to the office flew open.

But nothing was in the frame of the door.

“Where in Equestria did-”

A horrible blunt force flew into you from behind, pushing you all the way across the room.

You slammed into the legs of one of the desks.

“AGH! Ughh. Gods above, what was...oh, moonrocks...”

A large creature, had to be at least two and a half meters high, towered above you. Another humanoid in a filthy straight jacket. Its legs were covered in linen caked in dried deep red blood. Its midsection was covered in rusted barbed wire. The head, or lack of one was the most striking part about it.

Instead of a head of any sort, a broken, hoof held mirror was in its place. The worse part about the monster though, was the yellow key hanging around its neck. The one with “exit” written on it.

A terrible groan shook the walls of the building. Pieces of the wall cracked and fell off, exposing the drywall underneath.

You scrambled to your hooves. Great, you really couldn’t just run away from this monster could you?

You got into position, ready to take on what ever the beast had to throw at you. Another mechanical groan shuttered from the creature as it slowly made its way toward you. Its gait similar to that of a wounded animal. You levitated one of the boxes from the desk and threw it at the monster. It made contact and shattered into pieces. Green circuitry and wires scattered over the floor. The horrible thing let out another industrial groan and paused.

Gaining its bearing it began to approach you again. That didn’t seem to do anything. You dragged a desk with your magic in front of the beast to block its path.

It simply raised one its large feet and broke the desk in two.

Okay you were running now. You exited the room and ran down the hall way.

SHIP!

Or no wait, what was it? Oh yea, SHIT!

What else could you do to take it down? Blocking its path seemed to not do anything.

“WOAH! AHH!”

The ground gave out in front of you. The hallway seemed to bend into the ground as if it were made of elastic rubber.

You fell onto the wall in front of you. The building seemed to be on its side now. You looked upward.

“OH TARTARUS!” The thing had followed you and slid down the same way.

You jumped to your left as the thing crashed into the wall, now a floor. It picked it self up and turned in your direction. The turning of gears and blowing of steam could be heard, but no industrial equipment could be seen. And the creature seemed to be organic minus the head.

You slowly backed away, glaring at the creature. Think quick, think quick. Buck it. You charged, aiming your horn directly at the torso.

It began to raise its leg to kick you away but you managed to move out of the way just in time to pierce it in the gut. Horrible black ooze flowed from the puncture wound.

The sounds of large machinery grounding flesh was deafening. It was like the maker relieving herself on your soul. You unsheathed your horn from the creature and made the attempt to stab into it again.

Its foot made contact with the side of your barrel and pushed you away. You collided with the wall behind you, knocking your breath out of your lungs. You coughed and sputtered as you started to get back up. The giant pinned you against the wall with one of its feet and grabbed you. With impossible flexibility, it brought you close to its mirror face.

You stared into it.

Your face was stained with splotches of blood and bruises. The black oil stained your mane. It slowly began to tighten its grip around your barrel.

You grunted.

In desperation, you reached down and grabbed the key between your teeth and ripped it from the beasts neck. You then immediately punctured in once again in the shoulder. The deafening sound of metal crashing against metal again shook the halls.

It threw your across the hall. You landed on a doorknob coming up from the wall floor and cracked a rib.

“AHHHHHH!”

The pain was excruciating. You held your side as you picked your self up again, you stumbled and slipped back over onto your side. You were covered in the black ooze the poured out from the thing.

The thing had slipped over after throwing you. It tried its best to get up, but the slick viscous liquid was giving it just as much trouble as you in terms of getting back up. You used your magic and threw a drug tray at it.

It slipped again and fell onto its back.

Using the ceiling and floor as leverage, it placed a foot onto either side of the walls and started to move toward you.

The oily substance pooling out of it. You opened one of the doors in the floor.

Its chest got stuck in the door way. Its lower limbs began to thrash. You kicked down on its neck area and the thing dangled into the room in the floor.

You turned and began to run away, limping the entire time. You twisted and turned down every hall you could to find the exit.

It was made difficult seeing as how the building was turned ninety degrees on its side.

Still, you hopped down and turned through every hall way you could. Then, all of a sudden, gravity decided to correct itself.

You fell back onto the floor.

“Guh! Shit.”

You landed on the rib. You picked your self up again and quickly tried to regain your barrings. You could hear thudding coming from back down the hall way.

“CAN WE NOT GET A BREAK IN THIS MAKER FORSAKEN TARTARUS!”

You limped through the corridors, following every exit sign. Certain doors threw themselves open, forcing you to dodge them. You enveloped one that almost got you with telekinesis and ripped it from its hinges in anger.

You turned down the last hallway.

“Finally, the exit!”

You moved towards it. The pain in your head and chest burning and pulsating within you. You were running off of adrenaline at this point.

You didn’t have any more energy in you.

*Thud*

*rip*

*Crash*

A door soared from behind you and hit the exit, the wood shattered and flew splinters in every direction.

The mirrored faced giant was limping toward you. The blaring of a horn echoed down the walls of the cursed clinic. Like Tartarus it was going to pull that shit on you!

Using your magic, you opened every single door in the hallway before turning back towards the exit. Ignoring every ache and broken bone, you dashed into a mad sprint towards the exit. So, bucking, close.

You unlocked the exit and started to push through. A door came slamming down onto your back.

“GAHHH! BUCK!”

It threw another door at you. You looked back in terror as it began to low crawl like an ant towards your position. The squeaking and whirring increasing in volume. You pushed the exit wide open, falling onto the pavement outside. Using your good hind leg, you kicked the door closed with all your might and backed up against the wall of the alley way. The exit door rattled and shook. Dents forming from the incessant banging it was unleashing against it.

You crawled your way to the back alley of the apartments toward its rear entrance. Using the last of your strength, you picked yourself up and escaped into the building. You closed the door behind you and locked it.

A final, mechanical screech could be heard from next door. And then. At last. Silence.

You panted as you slid down the door of the apartments rear entrance. Grasping at the broken rib, curling up into a fetal position.

You looked down the hall way. You were in the main lobby of the building.

The inside was...beautiful. The lights were on. The walls were neat and seemed to be freshly painted.

Pictures and paintings hung from them.

“Finally.”

You panted as you rest your head against the door.

“Finally...I’m here.”

You took out the painkillers you found in the clinic. You downed what you pretty sure was over the recommended dose. You didn’t care.

You picked yourself up and walked into the lobby. Quiet, muffled music played from some unknown source.

The light shewn beautifully against the orange walls of the place. The scent in the room was of a sweet citrus. You found a comfortable looking couch and laid upon it.

You cleaned and reapplied the dressings to your wounds. The black mark from the hospital still stained your coat. You sat up and took a deep breath in, allowing the calm nature of the area overtake you.

“It’s so...different here.”

You looked over towards the front desk. You had a near heart attack. Though upon further inspection, you didn’t know whether to feel dread or laugh.

There stood a pedestrian, holding his candle, in a...bellhop outfit.

It just stood there, as if it were its job too. You stared at it lazily.

“Why Anon came up with you creatures is hard to say...and why you must be so violent with out those candles is of another mystery.”

A smile touched your lips.

“But sometimes, you can be rather silly.”

The pedestrian stood there in silence. You chuckled and took in another deep breath.

“Though I am finally here. And after what just occurred. I need a little rest.”

You took in the calming and finally clean and neat atmosphere the lobby had to offer. You frowned.

“I should make good use of this time. I do not know what this calming environment is supposed to mean to Anon. Perhaps it was the only place he felt safe?” You sighed.

“What ever it means. I still have this horrible feeling of what happened to my Anonymous...and that this may be the calm before the storm.”

You leaned your head back and listened to the comforting music, waiting for the painkillers to take their effect.

~~~~