The World Beyond The Fog Pt. 01

"Wait, why am I writing everything?"

"Because your handwriting is very beautiful."

"Oh, yeah? And when I wrote a request to repair the window in our room, you said I was writing like a pig with its hoof."

"Piglet."

"Here, you admitted it!"

"Write, don't chat! Just copy this paragraph completely."

Johnny watched all this and was even amazed at how much it reminded him of his first days in the dorm. Damn it, he himself should have classes tomorrow, and he's stuck here. Although there is still a big question: where is "here"? He was not sure he was in the same forest, just somewhere in its depths, where this place was hidden. What if it is located in a completely different world, so to speak. Maybe in that forest there was only a passage to this place, which is not physically located there, otherwise it would have been visible from a satellite, for example. He would like to ask about it, but he saw that the girls had no time for him. So he decided to take a look at the room.

The whole room looked fine overall. It's just that quite ordinary things alternated with not quite ordinary ones. Sometimes even something completely strange, like a huge hook sticking out of the wall between two wooden windows, almost to the ceiling. Or, among the posters with skeletons of quite ordinary animals, some indescribable creatures came across.

And yet, Johnny couldn't help but stare at Emma. She was about his height, perhaps a little taller. A blue jacket over a turquoise golf shirt did a good job of hiding her curves. Unlike the tight jeans that showed off her slender but strong legs. It was clear from her bare feet that she was still wearing cotton stockings, but unusual ones. They had finger cutouts. It shouldn't be very comfortable to walk around in sneakers with something like this. However, as soon as Johnny saw them, he immediately guessed why they were like that. By and large, there was nothing alarming about Emma's appearance, except, probably, her nails. They were slightly pointed, but if you don't look closely, it might seem like they were just ordinary overgrown nails.

"Okay, I'm done with this, let me re-read it." Wendy took a few sheets of paper and began to walk slowly in circles, reading to herself.

This was a completely different case compared to Emma. She's that creepy kid who just grew up. A little shorter than Johnny, with unruly hair, a gloomy face and large dark eyes, one look of which would make you shiver. But when you looked down at her, when her face was focused on such an ordinary thing as school homework, her intimidating aura disappeared. At first it seemed to Johnny that she was wearing a specific black dress, but in fact it was a combination of a long skirt, jacket and apron. In addition, it looks like Wendy didn't change her clothes after going into the forest, walking in the same old boots.

Sitting down on the rug, Johnny thought about how he would spend these two weeks.

After 15 minutes, Wendy concludes:

"Okay, I think it'll do. Get ready."

"Hey, what about the conclusions?

"You'll add conclusions when it's our turn."

The girls started getting ready, Emma went to get some clothes, Wendy took out her bag, into which she loaded the papers. Johnny decides to ask:

"So are you really studying here?"

"Well, yes, so?" Emma is perplexed.

"I just didn't expect that it was the same as with us. Humans, I mean."

"Well, there is probably something in common. Wendy, I'm ready. Shall we just lock him in the room?"

"Yes, and just in case..." Wendy makes a small wave of her wrist and a large box under the window opens. A small iron ring on a long chain immediately flies out of it. After the entire chain is lifted into the air, at the other end there is a large iron collar with a leather lining. Wendy points her thumb at Johnny, after which the collar opens and flies onto his neck. Before he even had time to realize what the hell had happened, he had already become a conventional dog on a chain. It was too late to resist, the chain pulled him closer to the wall and hung itself by the ring on a hook under the ceiling.

"Hey, what the hell is this, is it mandatory?"

"It is, so you don't run away."

"I wouldn't dare, you yourself said it was dangerous here."

"Precaution won't hurt. Our door opens easily from the inside, so you would probably be tempted to sneak out."

Emma decides to intervene.

"Wendy, isn't this too much? You attached this collar to different animals, at least he won't pick up any infection?"

"He'll be fine. Come on, we don't have much time."

Johnny is confused by the collar, which really smells bad.

"Stop! What if... someone comes in?"

Already standing in the doorway, Wendy looks irritably at Johnny.

"Who's coming in?"

"Emma was talking about some commandant, she definitely has the keys!"

"No one will come in without asking." Wendy quickly slams the door, so Johnny can only come to terms with this situation.

Mentally wishing Wendy all worst, he decided to examine the collar. It looks like it's much more complicated than it looks, and he won't be able to remove it himself. After walking around the room with it, Johnny discovers some "features" of the chain. So, if you move sharply or pull the chain, it pulls you in response. At these moments, the collar puts a lot of pressure on his throat, so Johnny decides to stop playing with it.

While the girls are away, he decides to sit on Wendy's chair and review the contents of her desk. In fact, it was both interesting and not very interesting. Everything looked like some alchemist's workplace, but most of the devices did not seem to give an obvious answer as to why they were needed. In the silence, he begins to hear some sounds coming from the street.

Approaching the window, he sees an interesting picture. On the road leading from the entrance to the campus to some other buildings, two people stood and chatted about something. They looked like ordinary high school students. Only for some reason, on the side of the road not far from them, there was a black figure that Johnny could hardly even perceive. It looked like there was someone's shadow there instead of a person.

But Johnny's attention was quickly diverted to another, no less frightening crap. It was a big, definitely at least 8 feet tall, four-legged creature with long furry paws and antlers, which was leisurely walking somewhere next to the road. And those two guys are chatting to themselves as if nothing had happened. Johnny didn't see the creature's face, but at that moment he thought that it was for the best. The creature, by the way, made the very sounds that attracted the guy's attention.

Then a new figure came into view that caught his attention. She was a tall blonde in shorts and a pink T-shirt with a backpack on her shoulders, walking to campus. Nothing out of the ordinary until Johnny noticed something was wrong. He decided to take a closer look, but he didn't understand, until, out of the blue, she raised her face up, as if looking directly at Johnny. This alone forced him to sharply move away from the window, to which the chain immediately reacted, further frightening Johnny, who was not yet used to it. He looked at her for just a second, but that was enough to notice that she had no eyes, just empty sockets. Johnny still didn't understand whether she somehow saw him, or accidentally looked in his direction, but this made him hide in horror under the window in the hope that she hadn't noticed him. Whatever she is.

After sitting in the corner for several hours and listening to the sounds from the street, Johnny began to feel sick. After a very unusual run through the forest, then wallowing on wet ground, and continuous stress, any organism begins to feel unwell. So Johnny began to feel so chilled that he even started to look for something to warm up with. His jacket was still damp and drying on a hanger next to Emma's bed. There were heating radiators in the room, but they were turned off. Deciding to borrow something from the girls' wardrobes, he checks the closet next to Wendy's bed. There turns out to be a bunch of black jackets and black aprons. Only some of the aprons had ingrained stains. Having dressed up, Johnny tries to figure out if these are traces of blood, because it looked like it.

However, he was distracted by energetic footsteps approaching the room. Johnny quickly closes the closet and moves away from it, wondering if the girls are already returning. However, after a few seconds he begins to hear something strange. At first it sounds like voices far away in the corridor, but then it turns into a set of noisy, inaudible conversations against the backdrop of those very steps, and the closer the steps, the louder the noise was, and at some point, it seemed to sound in the room, and not from behind the door. Johnny, absolutely not understanding what this is, decides to move away from the door and hide behind Wendy's table, as far as possible with the collar on the chain. Hiding, he discovered that the noise was so clearly audible, as if it was already in his head, and the source of the steps was just as close as possible to the door. And, oddly enough, he passed by, and with his distance the noise also began to fade away.

"Damn, that was some really creepy shit." thought Johnny, after he stopped hearing the noise completely.

Although he still managed to hear a lot. There were also slow, very heavy steps, along with the sound of something iron and no less heavy, dragging along the floor. There were also jumping sounds, as if someone was jumping along the corridor on one leg. And there was also the sound of many footsteps, which, with laughter and caustic phrases, rushed somewhere along the corridor.

But finally a couple of normal steps were heard - finally the girls returned.