When Irene Bae awoke that night, she immediately knew something was wrong. The first hint was that she was no longer on her bed. Instead, she was laying on an increasingly uncomfortable hardwood floor. The second hint was that it was freezing cold, as her blankets seemed to have gone missing along with her bed. And the third hint was that instead of being awoken by her usual, blaring iPhone alarm, Irene was awoken by a scream.

The slim girl shot up from her position, her mind hazy and her body sore. She noted that she was no longer in her bedclothes and instead wore a pair of tights and an oversized plain black T-shirt. Her jet-black hair was tied neatly into a bun. She wore a pair of old sneakers that she didn’t even know she owned. Oddly enough, her first thoughts were those of embarrassment: who had changed her clothes? She quickly realized that such thoughts were not important. Where was she?

The place she’d woken up looked like the remains of a partially-demolished home. The room she was in was mostly exposed to the open air; she appeared to be on the ground floor. There was very little besides broken pieces of stone and splinters of wood where a door used to stand. Above her, a lonely, larger-than-normal half moon sat in the sky against a backdrop of cloudless darkness. To Irene, something about that sky chilled her to her core (even more so than the frigid air). It was an alien sky without stars or clouds. It felt empty. Something was terribly wrong. The girl sat for a moment, drawing her knees up to her chest and hugging them as she shivered and tried to piece together whatever memories she had.

She remembered bidding her mother goodnight, brushing her teeth, lying down… she remembered tossing and turning for a while, just as she always did, before finally nodding off…

Irene was wrenched from her reverie as another scream, closer this time, rent the air. She bolted up and immediately sprinted out of the room and into the unknown. In her mad dash she was able to quickly absorb that she was in a suburban neighborhood, or at least what was left of one, and that the scream had come from behind the house she’d been in. In a flurry of adrenaline and fear, she ran around the corner of the house, over the remnants of a wooden fence, and into the backyard.

It was then that Irene came upon one of the most terrifying scenes she’d ever encountered. In the center of the rubble-covered, grassy lawn was a young, artificially red-haired girl, not much shorter than her. The girl was wearing a tattered school uniform. She had been running across the lawn when Irene rounded the corner of the house, but had tripped over a stray chunk of stone. Close behind her was a tall, thin man, moving forward slowly but surely toward her position. The girl was screaming in earnest now, tears running down her pale cheeks as she began dragging herself along the ground in a desperate attempt to escape the man. She hadn’t seen Irene yet.

There wasn’t a second thought in the older girl’s mind. She scanned her surroundings and came upon a particularly large chunk of fence with a well-sharpened edge. She scooped it up into her hands, ignoring the splinters digging into her palms. Irene sprinted forward as fast as she could. Despite the man’s slow speed, he was feet away from the crying young girl. Irene caught as much momentum as she could in the short sprint and lunged forward, swinging the piece of fence like a baseball bat. She struck the man on the side of his head, which, (to Irene’s horror) was easily sliced open. The man staggered away from the young girl, who had ceased her screaming and was now watching in shock. Despite the depth of the cut on his head, the man did not bleed, and in fact recovered from the blow very swiftly. He turned to Irene and let out a low, animalistic growl. Irene froze in terror.

The man’s skin was a dark, putrid green. His eyes were sunken into his skull, and his nose was mashed into a tatter of flesh and bone that dangled in front of his cracked lips. Several of his teeth were missing, and the few that remained were yellow and black. He advanced on her, and in her fear, Irene found that she was unable to move. The man stretched his arms forward. He was now inches away from her. She knew that she needed to do something, anything, but she couldn’t. It was too much, nothing made sense, this had to be a nightmare of some sort, and if she died in her dream she would just wake up and it would all be over and she would wake up in her bed and she would be home and everything would be okay and -

There was a loud thud, snapping Irene out of her panicked stream of incoherencies and back to reality. The younger girl had gotten ahold of Irene’s impromptu weapon, somehow, and had used it to knock the man down again. However, the other girl had not frozen up after the first hit, and was instead barraging the man with rapid blows as laid on the ground. Irene staggered back and fell onto the grass, her head swimming. When the younger girl seemed satisfied that she had finished her work, she jammed the spear-like weapon into the man’s skull as her final blow.

The girl then turned to look at Irene, who was now sitting on in the grass, dazed beyond belief. What was that man? She had seen these sorts of things, but only in movies. It couldn’t be real. It just couldn’t be.

The young girl walked over to Irene and knelt in front of her. She couldn’t have been older than nineteen. Although she had been in a frenzy just moments before, she looked at Irene with such genuine sincerity and peacefulness that the older girl couldn’t help but feel comforted.

“You saved my life. Thank you. Thank you so much.” she whispered, her voice breaking slightly at the end of her sentence.

“Y-you saved mine, too.” Irene said, shaking her head in an attempt to clear it. This girl was much younger than her and had to have been even more terrified. Irene had to be strong, for her. She couldn’t let her emotions get the best of her again. She took a deep breath and looked the girl in the eyes. Those kind, gentle eyes that looked so out of place in the hellish landscape they were in.

“Do you know what’s happening? Or where we are? Or how we got here?”

“No. I woke up a few hours ago, in a shopping mall about mile or two from here. I’d fallen asleep in math class, just for ten minutes, and when I woke up, I was there. There were a bunch of monsters like him,” the young girl paused to offer the remains of the man behind her a scathing glare, “I managed to get out without them getting to me. I was hiding out in the house next door when this one came and started chasing me. Thank god you were here, otherwise…”

The girl broke down then, resting her face in her hands and plopping herself down on the ground in front of Irene, sobbing. The older girl wrapped her arms around the young girl’s shoulders and rubbed her back as she cried. Admittedly, the gesture may have benefitted Irene more than the girl she was comforting. The girl’s warmth was welcome in the chilly air, and touching someone who (as far as she was aware) wouldn’t hurt her was helping to clear her head.

They stayed like that for a bit, holding each other tightly, until the younger girl was done crying. They detached from one another and Irene found herself missing the other girl’s warmth.

“What’s your name?” the older asked, mustering a smile for the girl.

“Yerim. Kim Yerim.” the younger answered, mustering her own smile back. Irene thought she looked very pretty when she smiled, flashing her flawless teeth.

“I’m Bae Irene. I would say it’s nice to meet you, but given the circumstances…”

Yerim gave a sarcastic giggle.

“Anyway. I have a similar story to yours, except I just woke up a few minutes ago, and I fell asleep in bed. I don’t know what’s going on, but we’re going to find out. And we’re going to get out of this. Whatever this is.” Irene said, standing up. Yerim followed her lead.

A flood of resolve washed over the older girl. She was no longer just surviving for herself. Freezing up like she’d done before was unacceptable. She would need to be strong, because someone else was counting on her now.

“We should probably go and find somewhere for shelter.” Irene said, beginning to walk toward the front of the house in order to get a better idea of their surroundings. To her surprise, Yerim reached out and took her hand as she followed. When Irene turned to look at the girl, her tear-stained cheeks turned a bright shade of red and she looked away but didn’t let go.

“It’s easier to stick together this way.”

Irene gave her newfound companion’s hand a reassuring squeeze, and the two set off into the night.

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Hey guys! So like I said before, this is my first time writing for anyone besides people close to me. Any critisism is appreciated. I honestly am doing this as kind of a freewrite... I don't have much of an outline for this, just kind of following whatever story the album has. Let me know what you think!