The Bridge of No Return

Maya barely slept after what happened.

Her hands shook as she poured water from the clay pot.

The house felt alive. Watching. Breathing.

Somewhere behind her, a whisper stirred.

> "Find the hidden mouth..."

She dropped the pot. It shattered on the floor, water spreading like veins.

Maya decided — enough hiding.

She grabbed a flashlight and the rusted iron key she found taped behind her father's old photograph. It had a strange symbol carved into it: a circle inside a square, and inside the circle, a black dot.

She knew where it belonged.

The bridge.

The forbidden storage shack near the construction site — sealed tight, chained, forgotten.

Maya made her way out.

The night was thick with mist. Trees leaned toward her like blackened corpses.

The half-built bridge loomed ahead, skeletal against the dark sky.

As she crept through the abandoned site, the smell of blood grew stronger. Metallic. Rotten.

The shack was waiting.

The chain was snapped. Door slightly open.

As if someone was inviting her in.

Maya swallowed her fear and stepped inside.

---

The air was freezing.

Dust hung like smoke.

Broken helmets, ripped jackets, tools splattered with old, dried blood were scattered everywhere.

In the center: a trapdoor.

Exactly like the one she saw in her nightmare.

The key fit perfectly.

Click.

Slowly, the trapdoor creaked open, and a cold blast of air hit her face.

An iron ladder led downward, into blackness.

No hesitation.

Maya climbed down.

The darkness swallowed her.

---

At the bottom was a stone chamber.

Symbols were carved into the walls—some in languages older than anything she knew.

In the center of the chamber, a huge slab of black stone stood upright.

And nailed to the stone, with iron spikes through her wrists—

Was a woman.

Still breathing. Eyes wide open. Mouth stitched shut.

Maya gagged, stepping back.

The woman struggled weakly, her eyes pleading.

And then — behind the slab — a movement.

Out of the shadows slithered something.

It was human once, maybe. Now, it was a writhing mass of rotted flesh, twisted bones, and screaming mouths stitched onto its body. Eyes opened across its skin, blinking.

The creature crawled across the floor, dragging itself toward Maya, its stitched mouths hissing:

> "One more... One more for the bridge..."

Maya turned to run.

But the slab behind her bled.

The floor cracked.

A hand shot out from beneath her feet — grey, broken fingers with nails like knives.

She screamed as the hand grabbed her ankle, pulling her down into the crack opening beneath her—

Into the buried world under the bridge.

Where the real nightmare was waiting.