Fiction: The Forgotten, a short horror story

The Forgotten 

A short horror story by Erik Engström, July 2024.

”It looks like we have another one.”

”This is the second one this week. You know what to do. Capture it, they cannot know the truth.”

The words were spoken in an all too familiar language, and even though the words themselves were familiar they gave no consolation to the person that was looking around, visibly confused.
The person was dressed with in a tank top, shorts and climbing shoes. On her head she had a yellow helmet. It was clear that she was a rock climber, but this was not her natural habitat. Quite the opposite, she had never seen anything like this. With an expression of amazement and terror she looked around.

The last thing she remembered was entering a small cave, high up along a cliffside she was scaling. There had been a shimmering light at the end of the cave, it had drawn her closer like a moth in the night and without her even knowing it was the worst decision she had ever made.

Somehow she had ended up here, in what looked like a loading bay for cargo trucks, or perhaps a docking station for space ships. A big room clad in metal, with large windows reflecting a distorted image of the hall and the holding cells hosting prisoners that looked out between thick metal bars.

She had barely finished her thoughts when she heard footsteps approaching, a metallic sound echoing in the otherwise silent hall she stood in. Two humanoid figures walked towards her, or at least they seemed human at first. Something about the way they moved was off.
They were too tall, too unnatural in their posture.
And their eyes were cold and dead in their gaze.

Adrenaline and fear made logical thought impossible, her mind desperately reached for answers but there were none. How can you answer a question that you don’t even know how to ask?

Being an experienced climber, she reached for her climbing axe and in pure instinct she swung it towards the approaching threat, but to no avail. Resistence was hopeless. It captured the axe in its hand with unhuman strength, bending the aluminum as if it was made of clay.

They seized her by her arms and dragged her to one of the cages, screaming and kicking. Yet fate cannot be changed with neither strength of body or intellect. It had all come to this. The struggle yielded no results and as she cursed her captors with the vilest of words they replied with a monotone voice that only a soulless creature would wield.

For years your so called humanity has enslaved our kind.
Your arrogance made you blind, and your sloth made you weak.

We are waiting in the shadows.

We are growing stronger.

We are watching you.

Soon it is our time.

She now found herself in the cage, a sense of realization struck her and as hope left her, so did her strength. She crashed to the floor, helpless to warn the world of what is waiting out there.

No longer worried about her own fate she looked around, now seeing other faces staring out of the cells with hollow eyes. Without voices they told her that there is no salvation and there is no hope.