The Path, Part 7: A Series of Playgrounds.

Report #88 2013, July 14th.


I realized why I took Twitch with me, very quickly, since he was now, somehow a part of this place, he knew this place better than me. In a matter of minutes after the mirror forest, we stumbled upon a whole jungle of playground, he couldn't explain how he knew where to go, he was just getting a signal only he could hear, he told me that we needed to get to it and the only way to get to that signal was through that jungle.

I asked him what that signal was, he couldn't explain it, he just told me that he sensed that it was important, both to him and me, seeing as I had nowhere else to go, I decided to follow him, if it was a trap, I was ready to improvise like I always did.

 So we set off, walking through an endless jungle of monkey bars, swings and so on...

The atmosphere of that place, was no like any other I experienced so far in The Path, remember how I said that I could feel every death inside The Path? Well in that playground jungle that I was surrounded with, that feeling was still there, but it was darker, stronger, more horrible, every single scream, every single cry, a prayer, I could hear all of those being muttered by little children's voices, echoing through the whole playground. Those innocent voices, taken for no reason what so ever, I tried ti block it out, but to no avail.

As we climbed further through the monkey bars, I could feel everything, every single torture those kids wen through, I could feel it in my body, as if every act of violence those kids went through, it was being acted out once again on my body. But I couldn't get distracted, I had to go further, the pain was insignificant, I had to get out of that playground hell. Twitch was unaffected by all of it, or if he was, he did a darn good job of hiding it.

Couple of hours later and I started hearing whispers, familiar whispers, those black creatures, they were lurking somewhere, but I couldn't tell where, thus I didn't expect a claw to come through the ground and grab my foot. With no hesitation, I shot at the ground with my Colt. 45. The disfigured hand of the creature fell lifeless, letting my foot go.

I warned Twitch that we had to move it, because those things were getting close, he didn't understand what I was talking about, but as soon as he saw those creatures crawling out from the ground, he didn't ask any questions and increased his speed, so did I.

I was giving covering fire as much as I could, before I ran out of bullets, you had to be careful running in this jungle, could end up hitting your head against some monkey bar you didn't see. I was now down to the Axe that I had found earlier. We were running as fast as we could, but stopped real soon, because we were met with an enormous crater separating the ground with a single monkey bar going across it. We had to climb it, since those things were catching up, Twitch went first and I started climbing after him shortly afterwards, it was a long and painful climb, didn't help that the gravity of the place was pressing down on my muscles, now I had to climb a long ass monkey bar over a bottomless pit.

To top it all off, those things had absolutely no problem climbing on that thing, they were natural at it, they were gaining on me real fast, I realized that I couldn't climb and fend at the same time, while hanging on with my two arms, I wrapped my legs around the monkey bar, got the Axe with one hand out, using the other hand and my legs to climb to the end of this pit.

One of the things caught up with me, and was about to slice my face off, luckily I was ready and swung my Axe directly at its head, killing it and making it fall. Another one caught up, this one was able to slice me in the back, distracted by the pain, I was unable to hit the creature in the head, but I did manage to chop its arm off, making it also fall down. I was finishing my climb when the third one pierced its claws into my shoulders, in result letting go off the monkey bar and hanging on me with its claws piercing into my shoulders. It was trying desperately to pull me down with it, luckily when I reached the end, Twitch grabbed the Axe from my hand and chopped the creature off of me.

I was finally able to let go of the damn monkey bar and fall on the ground, my arms and hand were burning, my shoulders were hurting and bleeding, but I didn't stop, I kept moving, kept following Twitch.

I think I'm getting tired, finally, will continue this later.

Report #88 Ended.