The before and the after

Picture this, it's mid-summer a nice 74 degrees out with a light breeze and all you want to do is spend time inside enjoying your alone time. You work 50 hours a week talking on the phones all day and all you want is to enjoy the view of the sun from inside with the peace and quiet of central AC. Can you picture it? No? Well, I can and that's all I planned on doing when I took a few days of PTO. I was so ready to get under my covers, open my blinds, and read a book from the confines of my safe home, but my friend had a different plan in mind. I was 6 episodes deep in Sherlock that I had just started that morning when I got a text from my friend Megan.

"Hey girl! Watcha doin?"

"Nothin much love, just watching tv. Wbu?"

"Oh nothing. It's so gorgeous outside today!"

I already knew where this was going. Every time Megan says it's nice outside, or the weather is amazing, there's always a follow up of,

"I was thinking we could do something! The day is too beautiful to waste!"

And I always reply with,

"Idk Megan, I was kind of planning on staying inside to rest."

"Oh. Well, you can stay inside anytime and I miss you! Come on let's go on an adventure. :)"

Now, even though I can be a loner and enjoy my alone time I also can't turn down the prospect of an adventure and she's right I shouldn't waste such a beautiful day. So, it doesn't take much for me to come back with,

"Ok fine, what do you have in mind?"

...

Next thing you know, we're lost on a trail somewhere in Sanford, FL. How's that even possible you may ask. Well, I have no sense of direction, and Megan will lead us the 'right way' until we've reached a beach somehow. At least we know our way around the beach, so technically if we got there we wouldn't be lost anymore, but that's beside the point. At this point, we were running out of time in the day and if we got stuck out on the trail at night the mosquitoes would carry us away like the pterodactyl's they are.

We finally stumbled across this billboard that had four sides and it looked like a map of the trails so we went up to it hoping to find some directions out of this place. Walking up I noticed the billboard had four sides and I could tell that each side said something different. While Megan was looking at the side that was labeled "The Before" which seemed to show us our place on the map, I circled around to look at the other sides.

Now, there are only four sides to this billboard but there end up being more than just four trail names because these bitches change but that comes later.

As I walked around the billboard looking at the trail names I noticed a few things. One, these were weird trail names and two, as I walked it seemed to have gotten darker. Yes, I know I said it was later in the day but it wasn't at the point where it would be this dark this fast. As I landed on a side that said "The After" I realized that it wasn't just dark outside the sky had turned blood red. I turned and saw a man walking away from us and I thought this was odd since we haven't seen anyone on the trail for hours. I yelled out to grab his attention to see if he could give us some directions out of this creepy ass marsh but when he turned around I froze in fear at what I saw. His short hair was disheveled and looked like it had mud in it. His eyes were bloodshot and it looked like he was crying tears of blood. His hands were soaked in black blood and he was coming straight for me. I turned to warn Megan to run but she was still looking at the billboard and looked unfazed about what was happening around us. I looked back at the billboard to the side she was reading and once I read trail name "The Before" the sky lit back up to a pinkish, orange sunset sky, and as I turned to look back at the man he was clean-cut and walked right passed us. It was almost like he couldn't even see us. I asked Megan if she saw any of what I had just witnessed and she just stared at me like I had two heads. She was starting to get annoyed because she hadn't had her anxiety medicine all day and told me to stop playing around and help her figure out how to read this godforsaken trail map so we could go home. I thought I was going crazy, so I went to the second side to her right to try and help find our way out of this creepy ass trail, but once I read the trail name and felt the air go cold I knew I wasn't in the same place as Megan anymore. I slowly turned to look at this new world around me where the trees and sky were void of any color and I could see my breath in front of my face. I was shaking now but not from the cold. I couldn't hear anything but my heart beating in my ears as I started to see creatures straight from a Stephen King book slowly walking towards us. I slowly backed up, in shock of what I was seeing. These weren't people, these weren't even humans. They had a human body but their heads were of animals and insects and creatures I had never even seen before. Not even in my worst nightmares. I was in shock and this couldn't be really happening because Megan was just standing there still oblivious to the nightmare ensuing around us. My mind caught up with my eyes and I realized I had to do something before we were both eaten alive by these things. I turned to grab Megan to run once again but right when I looked at her side of the billboard again and read "The Before" it all disappeared. The sky went back to normal and the trees had color again.

I started to panic, I grabbed Megan's arm and yelled that we had to get out of here. That this billboard was changing our reality and we weren't safe. She yanked her arm away from me now extremely upset and said in an annoyed tone:

"Stop being dramatic. You were supposed to be helping me get directions so we CAN get out of here. I guess I have to figure this out myself."

She walked over to another side of the billboard and I yelled "NO!!" and tried to run over to stop her but it was too late. The world changed color again but before anything happened I figured I could just go back to the first side and read "The Before" and we could both get out of here. I ran back to the first side but instead of seeing "The Before" that was just there moments ago it said "The Blue".

Our world turned into a living nightmare.

The sky turned dark blue and instead of one or two creatures this time they were all around us and closing in. Megan screamed and I knew the only way we could escape was to find the side that said: "The Before".

We were being surrounded so I couldn't make it to the other side of the billboard and none of the three sides had our world 'The Before' so that must mean it was on the fourth side. The other side. There was a small space below the billboard so I dove underneath. On the other side was this man with a walrus head and big white tusk, but I knew once I looked at the board everything would change back so I took the chance and as the walrus man made it to me I looked up at the board! But it didn't say 'The Before' and the walrus man didn't go away. He pierced his tusks through the center of my neck.

I heard the crunch of my esophagus in my ears and confusion was the last thing I felt before I died. Right before everything faded into darkness I heard a voice say,

"It can't be too easy for you now."

I opened my eyes and could hear a clock ticking... I don't have a clock.

...

Could you find your way back in time, 'before' you die?

Dreamt and written by Kristina Darrah

#nightmares #shortstory