TICKETS, PLEASE

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Declan was getting even worse vibes than the hotel, he clutched the rosary but decided to shove it in his pocket. After hearing Rae's voice he looked behind him and gave her a focused glance.

"Do you smell the cigarettes too?" His eyes narrowed and returned his gaze to the darkening hallways lined in cubby holes and old children's art projects. Well...what was left of them. He was too occupied on finding his uncle to notice Gertrude had walked off. A part of him felt odd for worrying this much.
 
Her nose itching with the smell, Rachel brushed past her friend to get a head start on finding the source. She'd been fixing for a smoke the entire night, it was about time she got what she wanted.

Marching down the desolate hallway, her boots making hard thuds against the creaky old floorboards, she caught sight of a ribbon of smoke trailing out from a door. "Got'cha." Grinning wildly, she lifted up one of her fishnet-covered legs and punted it hard into the wood blocking her path. It wasn't enough to break it down, but the effort earned her a scream.

"Please, just leave me alone!" a muffled voice shouted brokenly from the other side.

Rachel didn't expect that. She stumbled back a bit, struck with an overwhelming sense of familiarity. That voice...

Gnashing her teeth together, mind suddenly racing, she gave the door another good kick. This time it exploded into a thousand splintery pieces, revealing a tiny storage closet...and the crumpled mess it contained. He was sobbing silently, lit cigarette wedged between his shaking teeth, no trace of a human being in those empty eyes.

It was...Glen.
 
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Reluctant to follow deeper into the hallways, Declan eventually did but glancing up and down at everything in the process. This was the last place he'd suspect any evidence of his uncle to turn up at, maybe a bar or even at the hotel they came from.

When Rae hit the door the first time he flinched and stepped back but the voice that called out quickly stunned him even more. Declan's heart stopped with both fear and confusion, unsure of what to say.

"U-Uncle?!" His voice was the youngest and loudest it had sounded all night but he didn't see the second kick coming along with the smash of the door. He raised hands to shield his face from the wood.
"Geez, Rae you didn't have to do...."

It was him.

Declan stared down at him with wide eyes through the bloody bandages slightly obstructing his vision. They both seemed to have had it rough but Glen seemed even more roughed up mentally.

"Damn?! W-Where have you been?!" He exclaimed shakily, his legs trying to think twice before he ran in the cigarette fogged room past Rae. Both arms awkwardly wrapped around his uncle in a feeble attempt at a hug. This had to be a first.
"It's been like three months!" The comment turned into an awkward laugh shoved into his shoulder.

This was very unlike him.
 
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Seemingly released from his nightmare, Glen thrust forward, leaning over his nephew as he gasped for breath. His shivering hands grabbed his thin shoulders tightly, like he couldn't believe he was real and holding him.

"Declan..."
he whispered, eyes wide and blurry in the darkness. "Declan, I...I'm so sorry."

While they were having their little reunion, Rachel was trying to wrap her mind around what was happening. "Wait, wait, you guys are...?" When she finally put two and two together, her mouth set in a very tight, very thin red line.

"Oh, shit."
 
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"It's okay! It's okay.." Declan laughed, and smiled sheepishly at the returning of the embrace. He felt a bit more secure now knowing he was alive and there with them. Wandering around with two people you don't know becomes tiring. Even if it was just Glen and he wasn't the toughest mentally and physically, there was security in the presence of a family member, especially to Declan.
"Are you okay?" His words became quiet again. "Let's get out of here.." Gently, he released Glen and stood up with a hand offered for help. No way he was going to let him sit there and smoke another cigarette.

It was only then that Declan noticed how troubled Rae seemed. Turning just enough to see her, he raised a brow. "Everything okay?"
 
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His hands tightly clutching onto the front of his shirt, Glen stood, slowly, on unsteady feet. He was sniffling, but quickly rubbed away his tears once he realized his nephew wasn't alone.

"...It's nothing, kid." Rachel grinned convincingly as she patted the boy on the shoulder.

Her mushy brain was working overtime to make sense out of everything, and it only got worse when she got a better look at the man they just saved. His clothes were torn and dirty, speckled with dark dried blood that probably wasn't even his own. He was covered in bruises, and had a suspicious unidentifiable stain on his pants.

He looked so pathetic and terrible that it just had to be her Glen...or one of them.
 
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Declan nodded slightly at Rae's response and turned back to his uncle. He didn't want to overwhelm him with questions at the moment...in his condition especially.

"Where'd the block headed asshole go?" He was referring to Gertrude. After running to find Glen he totally forgot about him.
 
Wandering among the empty halls of the academy, Gertrude began to pick up a clearer signal of life. It didn't take an EMP reader or any fancy tech for anybody to pick up heavy breathing. It might not have been breathing, however. The sound resembled more like air escaping a large inflatable device. Much like a raft or air mattress. Just once the sound had escaped his ears, another began. Almost like a ripping cough it accompanied the exhaling. Gertrude followed the sounds, leading him to a stair case. As gasps became almost deafening to his sensors he descended upon the stair case without second thought.

At the bottom of the two flights of stairs lay a set of push doors labeled "POOL". Gertrude thought of how much of an awful safety problem having a sub level pool could cause a school right before pushing the doors wide open, as if announcing his arrival to what was behind them.

In the dark, empty, mold encrusted pool layed a pale beast. It stood up with it's almost a dozen large arm-like appendages to support it's elongated torso. The breathing intensified as five fleshy flaps opened and closed from the top of it's grotesque body. In the front of it's torso, a ninety degree bend led to the face of the monstrosity. There was nothing but a large slab of pale skin with an assortment of tiny puncture marks clustered into an oblong shape. A sickly green eye for each hole throbbed in and out, almost in sync with their owner's breathing.

"AAAAARRRRRGGGH-bzzt"

Gertrude's scream, being cut short by his wound interrupting his speech processor, was loud enough that it almost appeared to startle the creature sitting inside the empty pool. Except, after close inspection, the pool was not empty. Aside from the creature dwelling within it, the pool was shallowly filled with an equally pale liquid soup of skin and whatever that creature was emanating from it's breathing vents and flesh.

Gertrude slammed the doors behind him and took off in a stumbling sprint. After the first flight of steps, he could hear the stomps of it's many limbs hitting the tiled surface. Of course, accompanied by it's horrible breathing. The off-duty teacher continued his upward run adorned with desperate cries and pleads for help. There was no way he would be able the take this monster down himself.
 
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Rachel's hands crushed themselves into tight fists; she couldn't take it anymore. If there was anything that could prove this smelly cigarette man was one of her slaves servants, it would be a fancy letter R branded on his left asscheek.

Reaching out for his pants, she was just a second away from ripping it straight off his hairy legs when the sound of a struggle reached her. Ears buzzing with the new sound, her neck almost snapped as she shot a look towards where it came from. "...What the hell is that?"

"Oh god, oh god..." Glen's voice cracked with hysteria as he crumbled to his knees almost immediately. Whimpering pathetically, he shut out the world by hiding his face in his hands. "Oh god, not again..."

It was a mystery how he survived this long.
 
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Declan had also heard it. His eyes widened at what sounded like distant shrieks for help.
"Is that.....should we...go?"

Next to him, his uncle shrunk to the ground again in the realest fear he ever lived to see in someone else's voice. He kneeled down next to him again, unsure of how to comfort someone and instead placed a hand on his shoulder. A few words choked up in his throat, they were hard to say. "Uncle, it'll be....alright."
 
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Gertrude fell straight on the floor. His boxy head making a large clattering noise as it hit the linoleum tiles. As Gertrude regained his stability, he noticed bits of glass on the floor where had stumbled. His wound was becoming worse and the creature was coming in for the kill. Hopefully to kill. Gertrude couldn't imagine the pain he would endure if the beast managed to keep him alive. Running down the dusty hallways it almost felt like an eternity as he dashed past poor artwork created by children most likely dead for years. Perhaps if they were alive to this day they would be much older than Gertrude. As his boots his the grimy floor he could hear faint squeaks from his boots. Perhaps it was the moisture from the creature's den or perhaps the blood from his "heroic" stand before the hotel hadn't completely dried up yet.

A shard of glass loosened from his face and then clattered to the ground with his boot crunching it in succession. He can hear the thumps of the monster's multiple limbs hit the ground in order. He hadn't noticed but was sure that the stair case to the pool section of the school had collapsed as the beast advanced over it. Turning a corner he had found something much more welcoming. It was his cohorts from the train.

With a strange looking child.

No wait, that's an adult man.

Almost feeling too safe in their presence, the breathing from beyond the building began to intensify almost as if hyperventilating to remind Gertrude that he is not free from it's grips just yet. Forgetting to mention was he was running, Gertrude had ran straight past his partners. Unfortunately he had only realized this as soon as he was outside the actual school.
 
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The approaching noise became louder along with what sounded like running footsteps, Declan knew it was coming their way. "Rae! Get in here!" He grasped at her red, sequin dress, pulling her with all his strength back into the storage closet.

With the disgusting noises of the monster getting closer and Gertrude running past, he had no idea what to do. His brain wouldn't think in that moment and if they didn't act soon, their box headed friend was going to bite the dust. Sickly breathing and stomps passed by, Declan held his breath with a hand over his mouth, waiting.

The hallway went silent after it passed...

Except for slow footsteps and a tune being whistled that seemed to echo through every hallway.

Declan dared to look around the corner of the doorframe to see. Falling dust almost completely clouded the trail behind him while his uniform boots made a unique 'clunk' on the school tiles. His white hair was ghostly but definitely the most dusty part of him.
"I told you this is what happens to passengers who don't listen~" He called, the whistling coming to a halt. "Perhaps I need to take you on a ride to a place more suitable than here, somewhere like a fiery ruins with no escape, yes?" A large chuckle with cracking skin followed his words as he kept walking by. The hefty sound of his boots fading.

Declan turned to Glen and Rae in silence, a distraught look over his face that read 'I don't know what to do and I'm scared'.

-

Outside, the monster came to a stop at the front double doors of the school, stomping wildly like it wanted to attack but....
"Leaving so soon, Gertrude?" The conductor appeared right next to the amalgamation, a clear shot of his stiff smiling face. He adjusted the white gloves over his lanky fingers and took the few steps down in front of him, getting closer to Gertrude.
 
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"God, you're ugly!" Gertrude shouted while trying to regain his breath. Accusations and insults like that only stung less once he remembered that he a possessed a large gap in the middle of his face.

"If this thing is your pet, I'm sorry..."

He sheath his carpenter hammer with the claw end out.

"But I'll have to kill it."

His lungs ready, Gertrude began to run towards the beast as it's eyes pulsed in and out with it's own breath. Gertrude performed a small leap and prepared to bring his wrath down upon the abomination.
 
"What the hell...?"

By this point it was like she was just repeating the same thing over and over. Rachel poked her head out of the tiny space she was pulled into and looked around, only to find an empty hallway...and a long trail of dust.

Her one eye flared with red hot fury once she realized who, or what, could have left behind such a trail. "That bastard..." she hissed, cracking her knuckles as she charged after the reason they were in this mess. "I'll goddamn kill 'im."

Glen, on the other hand, stayed in the storage closet. He was shaking violently, hot tears stinging his already puffy eyes. Hearing the conductor's voice seemed to really shake him up, maybe he knew more about this place than the others knew...
 
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A wild shit eating grin spread from cheek to cheek on the conductors face. "Oh, I guess you could call it my pet.." After seeing Gertrude waste no time with trying to attack it, he didn't waste a second either. He removed his hat and snapped his finger, igniting a wild fire coming from each spore of an eye hole in the monster.

"It's a long fall to hell, hold on tight my cocky friend!" The ground started to crumble beneath Gertrude in the front yard of the elementary school, it looked like a huge sinkhole with no bottom. Both the amalgamation and him fell far for an eternity before slamming into the metal floor of a rusty factory. Dusty and dark.

Slowly, the fire began to spread, the walls and machines showing no way out of the metal maze. It was going to get hot fast.

Above ground, the conductor turned around, placing his hat back atop his head only to be greeted with a red bathed beauty coming his way. "Ah, the one with the wonderful vocabulary, I've been looking for you." Before Rae was able to object anything, a musty hand, practically leaking dust lifted in a graceful way. He opened the palm of it to reveal a cockroach, big and live. "You like bugs, dear?"

Thousand, millions of cockroaches flowed out from under every crack in the school hallway, starting to swarm her until every inch of her body was covered. With that, Rae was also sent off to an enclosed space. A rusty, metal room with no escape. It was just her and the thousand of hairy bug legs now.

There was a third one with them...and not to forget the pathetic one who kept managing to get away. They were definitely next.


"Dammit Rae!" Declan grit his teeth at her anger that kept getting them in bad situations. He had no idea how to calm down Glen but to keep a hand on his shoulder. Maybe it would do something...
If the conductor followed the way Rae came from they were going to be found in no time. "Uncle, please let's find somewhere else to hide.." His cold hands coated in dried blood shook Glen lightly.
 
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Before she could comprehend what was happening, she was thrusted into her own personal hell. A mob of cockroaches swarmed her, crawling into every crack and crevice of her body. She opened her mouth to scream, but insects poured inside, suffocating her.

On the other hand, Glen seemed to get a better grip on himself. "Come on..." he whispered as he tugged on his nephew's sleeve. He was better at hiding than he led on...

After all, he had been doing it for awhile.

The shadows running along the old walls loomed over them, twisting and contorting in ways thought impossible until now. His wide, blurry eyes scanned everything ahead of him, trying to make out the shapes in the darkness.

Eventually they came to a classroom door. Glen pulled them both inside before locking it behind him. Knowing that a simple lock wouldn't be enough to keep out any pursuers, he tried pushing the teacher's desk in front of it...but was too weak to actually get it to budge.

Huffing a sigh, frustrated and more than a little desperate, he turned to his nephew. "W-we don't have much time, help me move this...!"
 
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The floor crumbled. Gertrude fell. So did the beast.

Upon landing, he had noticed where he now sat. It was a factory warehouse. Almost to crisp exact detail like the one he and multiple other survivors hid within during the Metropolis Massacre. The Metropolis Massacre in itself was the last major event that occurred within the Heloptin civil war. However, the end of that war was only the beginning of Gertrude's new life. A life where he continued to relive the events in his nightmares. Nightmares he would would awake from wishing that he could have done something to stop the slaughter and horrible hate crimes that took place within those grueling five years of bloodshed. However after his body was recovered by soldiers of a third-party, the party that took side with Gertrude's homeland, he was found to still be alive. His mind was rewired and given a new name. They were able to block a lot of what had happened from those dark years but it all eventually came back to him by his teenage years. At first Gertrude had thought that all the dreams of watching his brains fall out his own head and hearing loud explosions were just disturbing visions. It wasn't until his twenties that he realized that these were not just dreams; they were vivid flash backs to his bloody childhood. His dreams have yet to reveal his original name and the faces of his family. As awful as the Metropolis Massacre was, Gertrude remembered a distinct lack of fire from the event. This fire and the scent it gave off was much more reminiscent of something much worse. The first moment he was dragged into the senseless war; the day his home was burnt to the ground from the crossfire of the opposing sides.

The monster had fallen with a loud thump. As it regained it's stance it's pasty grey skin began to catch on fire. The beast let out a large groan from it's back-flaps, steam emanating from the gaps between the skin. It's eyes protruding from the cluster on it's "head". Perhaps the ugly old man had wanted to trigger something deep within Gertrude's mind. Maybe it was a primal fear where he expected Gertrude to give in to fear and be killed? If anxiety and fear was what The Conductor anticipated, he was completely wrong. Gertrude was angry. He was angry that The Conductor thought he was this weak. He was angry that The Conductor thought he could kill him with this. He was angry because the monster in front of him would not stop groaning and squeaking.

"QUIET! You sound pathetic,"

The heat beginning to get to him, he took off his black overcoat revealing a white button up shirt tucked into his pants with a loosened tie hanging from his neck.

"It really doesn't suit something scary like you."

Swinging his hammer into the monster's flesh it hit with a large thump. Almost a split second after, the flames from the monster's skin traveled onto Gertrude's weapon and then on to his skin. Gertrude just stared as the orange and red consumed is hand. He wanted to scream but no connections from his optics and skin to his brain to his audio repulser would work. However, the pain began to set in. The feeling of his flesh baking finally hit the synapses and nerves of his mind like slap to the face. It's almost like the fear would suddenly set in. But it didn't. Only anger existed in Gertrude's mind. Looking back toward the monster he realized the beast was beginning to wind up an attack. Turning back towards his arm, there was no skin left. Only bone and wire remained. He stared back towards the monster.

"Forgive me for what I must yabba-dabba-doo..."

Hooking his fully intact left hand into the monster's pasty flesh, he reached his skeletal hand into the eye holes of the monster. Almost like a bowling ball of meat. In response, the monster began to thrash around the factory floors; bumping into multiple pieces of equipment and destroying conveyor lines as Gertrude still hung on. As his right hand was dug into the monster's eyes, he found the proper momentum and time to swing his body upward. Now hooking his melting left hand higher into the monster's body, Gertrude took his skeletal right claw, clenched, and pulled. The monstrosity skin peeling off and flapping away in the fire like a flag. With that layer of flesh removed, a ludicrous amount of organs and pale orange blood poured out from the abomination's body on to the floor akin to a bloated beach whale's carcass exploding from gas build up. The beast let out a dying wheeze as it's legs gave out and fell to the floor. Gertrude's body falling into the puddle of guts right with it.

Once Gertrude found the strength to lift his head up, he realized that he was no longer in the infernal factory. He was inside a cold office building on the floor. The pile of guts was no longer surrounding his body and his hands were still intact. Rolling his body over, he stared towards the ceiling as a thought suddenly hit his mind like a ton of bricks.

"My name is Kingston..."
 
With every footstep the sound got louder, it turned into stomping when the so called conductor realized one of them had gotten through. He could feel the rage inside of the TV heads spirit. It made him angry too, each cold vein under his cracked old skin threatened to burst. At least the red one was having trouble, next the two in hiding would have to go.

-

Without hesitation, Declan followed his uncle throughout the dark halls of the school. Each musty art project hung on the walls only tossed unwanted memories his way.
The sight of a blindingly blonde boy sitting across from him at recess under the shade of a berry tree filled his vision. Every now and then a bird would come and pick one off, both staring in silent awe. It was sunny out, it always seemed to be oddly bright in the memories. If they were even enough to be memories. That one year he went to a public elementary school gave him anxiety thinking about it. How close the impending doom of his own families sake was made him sick. Every worrisome morning when he would wave bye to his mom while getting on the school bus. It was always green in flashbacks but it wasn't that way, everything was brown and dying.
Shrieks of other children swinging off handle bars in the park threw Declan out of the memory, only to realize he was in another classroom with Glen.

"Huh!? Oh, okay." He grabbed an end of the desk and grit his teeth while pushing it toward the door with his uncle on the other side. Once that was done, his hand absentmindedly adjusted the bandages wrapped above his eyes. "Geez, I hate elementary schools..." Declan hissed, the end of the sentence choking up held back tears. Before finding Glen he had paid no attention to the surroundings, at those moments he was so focused on finding him.

His throat burned with emotions threatening to spill out as he stared at a crayon drawing covered in old blood.


"Oh come on...you don't have to hide from me~? I just want to show you a way out~!" The conductors voice chimed through halls, looking for the last two. Little did they know, his anger was about to overflow in frustration.
 
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He heard the conductor's voice through the rotting wood of the door. It was calling out to them like they were lost pets, promising them a way out, but Glen knew better. He had spent weeks, possibly months, running from one hellhole to the next, barely escaping the clutches of insanity every time.

But something told him that this time he wouldn't make it.

Turning back to his nephew, he grabbed him by the shoulders so that he could look him square in the face. "Declan, no matter what happens, I just want you to know that I...I..." his voice trailed off when the footsteps sounded like they were right outside of their hiding place.

Shoving Declan behind him protectively, he puffed out his chest, sucked in a breath, and waited for the inevitable.
 
"W-What are you...?" Declan's voice cracked under the pressure of the moment, large tears spilling onto his blood stained cheeks. Both the sudden flashbacks doubled with his uncles odd behavior was actually scaring him. Impending doom approached and the hot tears on his face stung the fresh cuts on his skin, Glen's hands sending almost an electric like shock through his tiring frame. "D-Don't say things like that...!" The abstract child-like personality flew out of his yells of fear, easily turning the 19 year old a decade back in an instant. Oh god how his head buzzed over and over inside at how he didn't want to die, not now, not yet, there was something he still felt like he needed to do.

"Uncle..." He watched from behind, frozen years behind, the familiar feeling of uselessness returning.

When the conductor started banging on the door, he realized it was shut tight by and object. Even though he had the ability to literally blow it up if he pleased, the small detail threw the old mans temper off the rails. "YOU PESTS, YOU PESTS, YOU PESTS! ALL YOU DO IS CAUSE TROUBLE, TROUBLE, TROUBLE!!!" He hit the rock hard walls of the school with force, smashing everything in his path. Pieces of everything flew, the door to the classroom pounding, threatening to smash into slivers any second now. "THIS IS MY PLAYGROUND! MINE!" His hands were like sandpaper, no blood spilling from hitting everything, just demolishing it all in one swift movement.

Finally, the door and desk gave way.

"YOU." The conductors eye's were dead set on Glen, his most wanted victim.
 
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