Chasing Shadows

Ophelia awakens to find herself in a strange place, with no memory of who she is or how she ended up in this forsaken, decrepit building. Soon she finds she is not alone, trapped alongside her is a monster that has also been trapped for a very long time...and he is very upset about it, finding his sole source of entertainment to be tormenting and killing any human unfortunate enough to find themselves in his domain. Despite the creature initially trying to kill her, they form an uneasy truce to find a way out of their shared prison. Over time they bond over shared traumas as they begin to learn things about the building and the one responsible for trapping them there. The horrors of their situation are only beginning as they dig deeper into how they got there, who trapped them, and why. Can they escape? Will the creature finally kill her instead? Or will the one truly pulling all of the strings be the end of them both?

Prologue

She Awakens

The first thing she noticed was her breathing, her chest felt heavy with each breath like there was a weight sitting on top of her. The next thing she noticed as she opened her eyes was that she was surrounded by darkness, the only light source coming from a dim overhead light that barely illuminated the walls on either side of her. She stared up at the ceiling for a moment trying to gather her thoughts, her head pounded from the headache that was coming on and her mind felt fuzzy. She tried to recall how she got here but every time she tried to reach for the memories all that was there was fracture pieces that she couldn’t make sense of. Finally, she noticed she was lying on the cold, dirty floor.

She groaned as she sat up, she held her head in her hand as she attempted to stand, using the wall to brace herself. She carefully scanned her surroundings, she saw that she was in a darkened, poorly lit hallway with large paintings that lined the walls. She thought to herself that the building must be old as the walls were yellowed from age and it smelled of mildew, the floor covered in various stains that she could’ve sworn was blood amongst other things.

“Where the hell am I?”

She said aloud to herself as she started to panic, she had no idea who she was or how she got here, could she even remember her name? She felt herself starting to hyperventilate when she paused and said to herself

“Calm down…breathe…just breathe”

She took some deep breaths as she leaned on the wall, trying to control her racing heart rate. When she finally felt herself returning to normal a name suddenly stuck out in her mind, a name that she was certain was hers

“Ophelia. Your name is Ophelia”

She said aloud before letting out a small chuckle, proud of herself for at least being able to remember that much. She sighed as she looked around again, trying to decide what to do. Which way should she go? Which way is to the exit? She looked left and peered down the dark corridor, noticing every so often the darkness was broken up by another light on the ceiling that barely illuminated more than a few feet. She then looked right only to see the same thing, both options look exactly the same and both lead to uncertainty.

Ophelia took a deep breath as she closed her eyes and decided to let her intuition guide her, before she knew it her feet started heading down the hall as she reopened her eyes. Apparently her intuition told her to go left, she shrugged to herself as she walked down the hall, trying to carefully make her way through the darkness.