Wake Up!

"Smile..." a faint voice said. "Even when the world feels like it's clouded in darkness and you feel lost," it said again. "Smile..." it said one final time. The boy's eyes started to twitch as they opened slowly. He couldn't see much; his vision was blurry. He began to see dust gently floating down from the ceiling as his vision started to return, and along with his eyesight, the sounds of his surroundings began to introduce themselves to his ears.

It was arid and barren, but suddenly he heard a thud to his right. He ignored it and glanced around his surroundings. It seemed as though he was in a small room on a medical bed. On his left were chairs and various pieces of furniture piled on top of each other, barricading a door along with some random articles of clothing stuffed between the empty spaces to make the barricade more secure. He heard another thud from his right, louder this time.

He swallowed only to be met with a harsh dry mouth as he moved his head to the right slowly, to perceive a large window covered with dust nearly impossible to see through, but some light shined through and managed to illuminate the room. There was a tall, dark, shadowy figure in the center of the window, bumping into the glass repeatedly. Thud! Thud! "Hello?" the malnourished boy said. Nothing happens. Thud! Thud! Thud! The figure hits against the glass window more vigorously and faster. "Who's ther-"

CRASH! Before he could finish his sentence, something blasts through the glass window shattering it into pieces. He pushes his head back against the wall as he sees it bolt right in front of his face, right above the bed he was laying on, slamming straight into the barricade. Loads of dust fall from the ceiling and fly throughout the room, causing the boy to cough. It had length, it was long, sort of like a snake, but its body seemed way too wide to be a snake. Whatever he just saw was not human. He hears the chairs fall from on top of each other and clatter onto the ground as he jumps off the medical bed, snapping off the IV tubes while he tries to run towards the shattered window.

As soon as his feet touch the floor, he hears the creature start to rise behind him. His legs fail him and begin to wiggle like noodles causing him to collapse on the ground filled with shattered glass. His heart begins to throb heavily. He feels the creature's eyes set onto his back as he desperately jerks his body to start crawling towards the window. His body is weak, barely moving as he desires. He manages to turn around and face the beast. He can now clearly see the despicable monster.

It was longer than three whole humans and blacker than the darkest night. It was massively elongated, with thousands of thin insect-type legs running along the sides of its body, moving synchronously. It had a large razor-sharp claw-shaped mouth and beady red eyes that were fixated entirely upon him. He puts his hand behind his back, grabbing a long broken shard of glass as the creature gets ready to charge at him. It lets out a loud shriek as it lunges at him with a mighty speed. Just before the beast touches the young man, he manages to roll over. The beast crashes straight into the wall under the shattered window with a loud bang. It howls and shrieks as it tries to wiggle itself out of the hole it created in the wall.

The young man gets onto the creature's solid black surface and stabs it with the glass shard. The beast vigorously shakes its lower body to throw its prey off of its back. The boy holds on tightly with his legs so that he does not fall off as he pushes the glass shard deeper into the monster's body. It squeals in pain loudly, its screams echoing the room, gradually getting lower and lower before definite silence.

The dust settled onto the boy's shoulder as he stood up and looked outside the window at a destroyed city, with vines and trees inside of buildings and monstrous creatures flying through the grey sky and crawling all over structures screaming and roaring. He took off his hospital gown and wrapped it around his bleeding hand while he thought: Damn, glass is a double-edged sword. He gets up off the creature and manages to make his legs wobble to the bathroom in the hospital room. He fumbled over to the sink and looked into the mirror, jumping back at the realization. He had never seen the person in the mirror before.