The Ones Beneath

The Last Night The city doesn't remember me. At least, I don't think it does. The streets I used to know, the alleys and buildings, the parks where we laughed—it's all hollow now, swallowed by shadows that breathe and whisper. And they're still down there, beneath the asphalt and concrete, waiting. I remember the first time I saw them—not the creatures themselves, not yet—but the signs. The small, impossible things. A photograph of my friends where one of them wasn't really there. A reflection in a cracked mirror that moved when I didn't. A whisper in the wind that called my name, though I was alone. We thought it was a game at first. The texts. The dares. The stories that we'd all laughed at, told each other late at night. Bloody Mary. The Rake. Slender Man. The Smiling Man. The Vanishing Hitchhiker. We said, they're just stories. They weren't. By the second week, the city itself seemed...wrong. People disappeared in broad daylight. My friends began to vanish, one by one, in ways I'll never unsee. The Rake waiting in a shadowed park. The Smiling Man leaning out of an alley as if he'd always been there. Mothman's red eyes in the sky, warning, though of what, I never knew. And every time one of them died, I was there, powerless, screaming. and the city swallowed the sound. I shouldn't have survived. I still don't know why I did. Maybe because I ran. Maybe because I wasn't as curious. Or maybe because...they wanted me to watch. Now, I walk through streets full of memories and horror. I walk through cities that are alive in ways they were never meant to be. The tunnels beneath the city hum with whispers, chanting names—my name, the names of my friends, and names I didn’t even know. They are all beneath us. Beneath the sidewalks, beneath the walls, beneath the thin veneer of reality we cling to. And they are awake. I am the only one left. And if you’re reading this… maybe it’s already too late for you. The shadows are patient. And they always hunger.