"All Hope Abandon, Ye Who Enter In."
By: Amanda J.
My heartbeat races with each step I take toward my final destination.
This is the end—I can feel it—but, more than that, I’ve been warned. Yet with their admonition, one would think I’d be prepared for this moment. I try to encourage myself, to persuade myself that it won’t be as bad as I think, won’t hurt as much as I know it must.
My stomach isn’t buying it.
The nausea is affecting my equilibrium, tilting the world in front of my eyes. I try to swallow back the building horror but the fear does not abate; even my saliva isn’t responding to the action.
This is it.
I see the others filing in around me, in front of me, like cattle awaiting the upcoming slaughter. Don’t they recognize the danger like I do? Don’t they understand what’s going to occur when they enter that room, the inevitability of destruction looming in their very near future?
The scene in front of me morphs, becomes something different, dark. As the others pass through the portal—the gateway to misery—their appearances change, shift. Their flesh, once healthy and glowing pink, now takes on a green tint, the skin peeling apart from the muscles and bones. The stench burns my nose, strong enough to knock me to my knees. I gasp for air but the gases soon invade my mouth; I can taste the noxious air on my tongue.
The room looks harmless enough; the deception was well cultivated.
What is that they always tell us? "Don’t believe everything you see"? Yes, I can hear the moans of torment already.
I’m approaching the threshold now. The sight in front of me becomes even more menacing. The flesh that was at first merely peeling is now entirely dropping away from their bodies like dead flies. Thick, dark liquids drip from the openings, pouring down upon the white tiles—staining them.
The puddles grow larger in diameter until the entire length of the floor is covered in a crimson sheen.
Surely there is some way of escape, some other path that will lead me away from the madness converged inside. How did I end up here, on the edge of obliteration?
I try to recall the steps that I had taken in order to be at this place this moment. I remember the decision I had to make, the choice I eventually made. Yet I didn’t really know what was coming, didn’t fully comprehend the peril awaiting me.
And now that I finally understand—now that my erroneous choice is made real to me—it is simply too late to change my fate.
My heart thrashes in my chest as my feet carry me across the barrier, the final border.
There is no turning back, no such thing as pardon.
And yes, there is no hope.
The butcher comes forward to slaughter; opening his mouth, he offers us our last epitaph.
"Welcome to AP English 3."
Besides that, I loved the piece. ^^ I have only one or two more suggestions. One, right here:
I think you managed to create a quirky story from a funny, easy-to-relate-to idea. One more small comment, though, that I'm not how you'd fix: the ending was rather predictable. The entire narrative was very melodramatic, obviously, and so I couldn't help but figure that the last sentence would be something innocent-sounding or plot-twisting. And, it was. But changing that would change the entire idea, so that wouldn't work. Perhaps you could incorporate some lines that either (a) might hint towards a more real terror, with more serious and less ancient-sounding "the end is nigh" phrases, or (b) might be a bit more natural-sounding. You could describe the walls, or the flouresence, or something just a tad less gruesome and dramatic than rotting flesh.