1|Bubble

Thunk.

The floor creaked beneath her feet. Distant, metallic screeches echoed through her skull, almost drowning out her muted humming. Her small fingers tightened around the fragile glass of the cup she held, unwilling to let it come shattering to the floor. A dim corridor terminated her path ahead—three doors. Faint voices echoed from behind the one to her left.

She watched the water in her glass tremble as a roaring hum tore through the air. Behind it stood the door straight ahead.

Even from behind it, she could smell the burning metal that singed the air. It was a unique scent to say the least; not quite ‘smoky’ in the traditional sense, but also not entirely foreign either. Like someone had lit a vat of rancid oil aflame.

Thunk.

She sucked in a breath before opening the door.

She squinted in the blazing light, both from the sunlight’s reflection off the unpolished metal sheets and from the dancing flickers of color shimmering now against her surroundings, eclipsed by the silhouette of a helmeted figure hunched over its source. She immediately covered her eyes with a free hand, well aware of the harm that those flickers could bring.

Thunk.

“Zoey?”

The flickers ceased.

“Zoey!” The figure chuckled, lifting their visor. “You didn’t have to fill the cup that far. You want any snacks while you’re at it?”

Zoey shook her head, carefully placing the glass onto the corner of a table as she entered the garage. A stray drop of water ran down her hand as she around to face the figure.

“Nope! You think we can go to that ice cream place again later, Lisa? They have this weird new flavor that I wanna try. Y’know, the one where they have grape juice mixed with chocolate?”

“Maybe,” Lisa stood up. She pulled her welding helmet off and set it down on the table beside the glass. “You know your mom doesn’t want you eating too much ice cream, right?” She picked up the glass and took a sip. A chuckle escaped her as she finished. “Alright, just a small cup this time, ‘kay? You had a bigger bowl than me last time.”

“Oka—”

A loud SHOOM rattled the concrete beneath them, followed by a dull, almost growl-like hum. Dust sifted down from above as the blast subsided around the two girls.

Lisa coughed as she pulled the collar of her shirt over her nose. She reached over and did the same with Zoey. “Stay here,” she said in muffled tones. “I’m gonna check on the boys. Go out to the driveway if it gets too dusty, alright?”

She turned around as frenzied footsteps thumped up from behind the garage door, followed by muffled pounding. “Lis!” the voice cried. “Lisa! A huge hole just opened up in the basement! I tried to pull them away, but—”

Another tremor tore through the house, followed by an earsplitting creaaak as cracks shot up across the floor and walls. The door slammed open.

“Lis!”

The hum from before was louder now that the door was open, yet it felt like all had gone quiet in this moment.

“Caleb,” Lisa’s voice pierced through the uneasy silence. “Show me.”

A single nod was all it took. Lisa trailed behind her brother, following him out of the garage and down into the open doorway to the basement. A dark, almost milky haze obscured the bottom of the stairwell.

Caleb stepped back, trembling hands gripping tightly against the railing.

“That… that wasn’t there before. Wh—”

“You think?” Lisa stepped past him, blocking his path with her arm. “Go stay with Zoey in the garage just in case. Or, no, you two go out to the driveway, ‘kay? I don’t want either of you two to be anywhere near… whatever this is. Your friends are still downstairs?”

“Y-yeah. I think so.”

Lisa stared into the darkness for a few more seconds before backing away, nudging her brother to do the same as tendrils of shadow pulsed from the dark miasma clouding their view. Dark lines spiderwebbed out in every direction around them, like cracks spreading across a mirror.

“It’s spreading,” she took another step back, nearly shoving her brother as she turned. “Caleb, go. Now.”

The two fled back to the top of the stairwell, Lisa slamming the door behind herself as she herself exited. She could feel her heart beating in her throat.

What was that down there?

It was hard to describe the hum as it sounded now. It was almost… mechanical, in a sense, rising and falling in pitch in gentle pulses as if it were a motor accelerating.

That was when it wasn’t crackling with the might of a thunderstorm.

Run.

Fractured thoughts filtered through her paralyzed mind. If Caleb’s friends were still down there, they weren’t talking anymore.

Run.

The word screamed through her head.

Run.

Were they—

Run.

Her eyes shifted to a worried Caleb, standing at the garage door and staring back at her. He was saying something.

Run

Run.

Run.

She finally tore away from the shut door, racing back into the garage with her brother in tow.

“Lisa!” Zoey sounded surprised by her return, popping up from behind a table with a socket wrench in her hand. “Did you—”

She shrieked as Lisa grabbed her by the hand, pulling her away and out of the garage.

“You two stay here,” Lisa stopped on the driveway. “I don’t know what’s going on, but this isn’t an earthquake. There’s… something down there. Caleb, call mom and dad and tell them what’s happening.”

“O-okay,” Caleb dug his hands into his pockets, feeling around. “I left my phone in the basem—”

Lisa slapped her own phone in his hands. “You already know the password, use my phone instead. Zoey, you stay with him until I get back.”

She could barely make out the pained expression on Zoey’s face before she turned away, making a beeline for the hanging tools on the wall.

A C-clamp and a length of tie-down strap would have to do.

…What was she doing?

“Lisa?” she could vaguely make out Zoey’s voice from somewhere behind her.

Her body marched itself back through the garage door. The basement’s stairwell was wide-open now; wherever its door had gone in the fleeting moments that she spent outside, she did not know.

Whatever the case was, the inky darkness had almost reached the top now. The haze had also strangely dispersed giving way instead to a uniform black; like a bubble made of pure shadow. Though, the black lines that snaked out from the ‘core’ lingered. She took a deep breath, hooking the clamp around the handrail. She twirled its handle until it had tightened, then began to tie the strap around her waist.

Every nerve in her body screamed for her to flee just as she had before.

“Lisa!” Zoey shoved herself between Lisa and the top of the stairwell. “Come on! You have to go too! Before something else bad happens! Caleb said you can check on his friends later!”

Lisa’s heart dropped.

“…Zoey?”

Zoey’s gaze drifted downward. To the darkness that now surrounded her feet.

Lisa did the same.

“…Lisa, I can’t feel my feet.”

Lisa looked back up to Zoey’s paling face.

“I can’t feel my feet, I can’t feel my feet—” Zoey’s voice wavered as she began to hyperventilate. She gripped Lisa’s arms. “Lisa, what do I do now?”

“Lisa!” Caleb’s voice came from the garage. “It’s coming through the wall now, too! I can see it!”

Her heart pounded in her throat. She grit her teeth, looking wildly around for something, anything, that she could use.

She shook her head. There was no time. She grappled Zoey beneath her arms the best she could without stepping into the shadows herself, pulling upward once she was steady. This had to—

“Ow…” Zoey managed through her own panicked breaths. Her voice was barely a whisper now. “Lisa, I’m scared.”

Lisa released her. The darkness was halfway up her calves now, and only creeping higher. Another razor-thin tendril raced past them, though this time it was suspended mid-air.

There was hardly room to stand anymore. Lisa felt her back press against the door opposite the stairwell, still holding onto Zoey by her hands. “Hold on, Zoey. I’ve still got you. You hear me?”

Zoey lifted her head, locking eyes with Lisa. She forced a trembling smile as her grip tightened a little. A shot of pain flashed across her face as she did so.

“I’ve got you.”

Lisa looked down to Zoey’s hands.

And the trickle of blood that now stained her own.

“Is everything going to be okay?”

Lisa pursed her lips. She shook her head. “No, but as long as I’m still here, I’m sure as hell gonna try.”

She felt another pair of hands grip around her own arm as she too began to sink into the darkness.

“Caleb?” she jerked her attention to her brother. “I thought I told you and Zoey to stay in the driveway!”

“Yeah, but Zoey’s my friend too” —Caleb grunted, tugging with all his strength— "Just because you’re her babysitter doesn’t mean that you have to save her by yourself. And…” He paused for a moment, heaving before he began to pull again, his feet slipping uselessly against the floor. “I’m not… going to let… another one… disappear. And you know I’m not letting you get eaten either!”

Lisa shifted her gaze downward. The bubble of darkness was up to her knees now.

Their fate had been sealed.

She glanced one last time to Zoey, her unconscious torso still poking out from the rest of the mass.

Her blood dripped down into the abyss.

She looked now to Caleb. He gave another futile tug, straining from his perch at the edge of the doorframe.

There was really only one thing left that she could do now. At the very least, perhaps it could spell an end to their collective dread.

She wrenched her arm from Caleb’s grasp and threw herself fully into the darkness.