SO Sorry but I have absolutely no excuse.

Hope you enjoy.

Matt's POV

He was fairly sure something was wrong when Scarlett started to melt, but then again...

Her tanned face had been inches away from his when her skin started to droop.

"Scarlett. What's wrong?" he'd asked lazily, his long hair drooping over his half-shut eyes.

"Nothing, why would you ask?" she replied a faint smile crossing her face. By this point her cheeks were starting to fall down her face. Scarlett leaned forward as if to kiss him and her eye with its beautiful green iris slipped out of its socket with a disgustingly wet plop.

"Agh! Get away from me!" Matt had screamed. He scrabbled back expecting to find a hand-hold in the loose soft sand of the dream world. Instead, his fingers brushed over some smooth, hard surface. With two round holes...

...and one grainy, triangular one...

...and if he wasn't mistaken two rows of smooth, square pieces each evenly lined up in a semi circle.

His features were frozen as glanced backwards and found, staring right at him, a human skull. A feral howl of fear wrenched its way from his mouth and he leapt up, scrambling and jumping in utter desperation. But, obviously, it didn't help. He tripped and fell onto another skull and once he forced himself to look he found the entire floor was made up of row after row of cemented skulls, like a cobblestoned pathway to hell.

"Matt! Wait! Where on earth are you going?" Scarlett called to him. He flipped around and instead of the beautiful weather manipulator he saw a skeleton, except... not human. He had studied anatomy in school and Scarlett's hips were backwards, instead of a spine giant spikes protruded from her back and knobs of bone bunched along in random groups along her body. Her skull was long and narrow and spooned at the end and curved into two distinct fangs. Her skin was dripping off of her body revealing organs and over sized maggots wriggling and writhing amongst the bloody tissue. "Come back! We were having fun weren't we? You like me don't you?"

Instead of responding Matt scrambled to his feet and took off down the hallway.

"Matt! Wait! Where are you going?" Scarlett screamed. Her voice sounded so hurt and alone that he wanted to turn around and run into her arms whispering reassurances, but the memory of her mangled body kept him running for his life.

"I know what you're doing! You're playing with me! You're such a tease Matt. Well, ready or not, here I come!" she called down the hall and he could hear the thrumming sounds of her gait. Matt wanted to give up so badly, he wanted to stop and run into her arms. He wanted to bury his face into her soft, warm skin and kiss her to death, yet every muscle in his body told him to run and keep on running, to never ever stop running because stopping meant getting caught and getting caught meant death. Every now and then he could hear her voice, calling playfully out to him. Echoing inside his skull to the point where he'd do anything-ANYTHING- to end it. Then he saw it. An intersection made up of several hallways, each one exactly the same as the next. In the center was a post of some sort. It was made up of some sort of smooth substance and at the very top was a bulbous and old fashioned lamp that resembled something from 19th century England. As he entered the intersection he grabbed the lamp and swung around, angling slightly to the right, launching himself smoothly into a tunnel several feet away from the one he'd just escaped from.

He'd barely entered the hall when everything started to blur. The bones on the wall swirled and melted like hot butter. The entire passage seemed to twist and he could barely make out the faintest hints of pink and blue. Then everything stopped. The walls that were formerly covered with skulls were now woven into a thick arbor made of some sort of tree. The entire structure was covered with a thick layer of foliage that cast a greenish glow over the ground. Matt tentatively stuck out one foot. The ground was made of compacted dirt, hard and firm and cool. With a touch more confidence he began to walk forward. The passage seemed to stretch on forever and eventually the sun seemed to be changing positions. Curiously enough Matt felt fine, in fact he felt better than normal. The sleepy daze he had entered when he met Scarlett had disappeared and he now felt alive, as if seven tons of caffeine had been pumped into his system. As he kept walking, he could almost hear the sound of birds chattering away with strangely human voices, but it didn't really bother him, he just walked along, not ever noticing the steely eyes following his every move, watching...

...begging every god they knew of that he would never escape.

Third Person POV

He sat very, very still.

"... and this is why we CAN'T MAKE MISTAKES! Because when you make mistakes, the big guys upstairs, they KILL us," Jonaten hissed at his employee. The employee-whose real name was Joeseph Heathner, but no one really cared-began shaking as Jonaten-the boss-stuffed his face into Joeseph's. "You, my dear, dear friend have just signed our death warrants. You really are the absolute best person in the business."

"Sir I apologize profusely for the mistake, I mean, really, the kid's got a mind like a safe, it was hard enough for the team to crack his head, much less do the insert..." Joe meekly trailed off as his boss glared at him, and though he was on the other side of the room at this point, it still managed to send shudders down his spine.

"BUT THAT'S THE POINT! You are the best, your team should have been able to do it, and now you are going upstairs to tell his very high, high majesty exactly why you managed to fail," Jonaten screeched back.

Joe sat there, very, no extremely nervously processing the information that had been dumped on him.

He had to tell the King...

he was going to be the only person in the room...

gods, he was going to die.

Okay so I guess I haven't updated in months and honestly I have no excuse so enjoy the chapter and I hope I can make weekly updates from now on!

So Sorry

Penn