When they finally fell silent, silence fell over the bathroom and we cried together. They were in tears and I was softly. My body was frozen and the shame of having been hiding for all this time punished me. Still, I couldn’t feel the slightest urge to get out of that cabin.

One of the girls asked the other if they should go out. I heard a denial, and silence prevailed again. That summed up the hours that followed. Sometimes one of the two would cry and the other would give some kind of comfort. They would try to have a conversation, sketch plans to get out of there, but soon the subject would die on their lips. Like me, they feared the inevitable moment when they would be forced to leave that bathroom. At one point they tried to force open the door of the cabin I was hiding in, which almost led to a heart attack, but they soon gave up.

When the monotony finally broke, it was only to start our nightmares.

A new sound reached my ears, unlike all the others. A sort of deep, throaty growl that seemed to summon the demons themselves down to earth. The girls called out the third’s name again, Sarah, with their voices crying. What looked like relief quickly turned to horror as the relieved words transmuted into screams. There was also that growl. An icy chill made my body shake, but aside from the shivering, that was the only movement I was able to make. The numbness made it difficult to even perform basic functions, such as breathing. I had never been so afraid in my life, I shivered as if I were trapped in an eternal polar cold.

I heard footsteps, slamming against the wooden doors, and another scream of pain coming from the mouth of one of the girls I shared a bathroom with. The second kept asking if there was something wrong with that Sarah, but soon gave up. Hell knew what was wrong with Sarah.

Through her screams, I understood that the girl presumed dead had attacked and bit one of her classmates. The sounds that followed, I couldn’t identify, but they seemed endless. In that mess, all I could distinguish was the constant growling. Finding some strength, I was able to get up and, trembling, climb into that cabin’s tank to see what happened. I needed to confirm the terror I was only allowed to hear.

Over the door, I saw that, next to my cabin, the one who was supposed to be Sarah was slowly rising, probably after being knocked down by the other girls. It was easy for me to identify her by her wide eyes and gross red veins standing out. Furthermore, his neck was an indistinguishable mass of raw flesh and already dried blood. One of her fingers was twisted into an unrealistic position, but she didn’t seem to mind. At the corner of her mouth, a thick foam of white drool was forming.

I looked towards the other two, where one of them, with brown hair, was trying to help her friend up, almost dragging her towards the door. It was useless to try to figure out where the second one had been bitten, her once white blouse was now completely soaked in a vivid blood red.

Only a sort of squeaky sound escaped my throat at what had happened. Even if I wanted to warn them, Sarah’s movement was too fast for me to even process. With her legs bent before getting up, she threw herself in a predatory leap towards the girls who were trying to escape, her hands tangling in the long brown hair of the one who was trying to help her friend, and pulling her to the floor, where she opened the door. Her mouth in an almost unrealistic way and sank her teeth into the girl’s head.

As the brown-haired girl’s mouth opened in a cartoon-like “o”, the bloodied classmate also fell to the ground, having been pulled when the first one took the boat. In desperation, she freed herself from her friend and dragged herself to one of the cabins, locking the door behind her.

The girl who was now on the ground screamed as the monster raised its head, clutching a grotesque piece of meat, wet with blood, in its mouth. The girl’s face was nothing more than a disfigured hole.

A strong contraction in my stomach forced me down from the tank and preceded a bitter vomiting. Even though I couldn’t see anything else, the terrible sound of wet flesh being chewed was enough to keep me bent over the tank for countless minutes. At that moment I discovered the primordial motive that guided beings to attack their fellow beings.

They ate them.

With heavy beads of sweat forming on my forehead, I turned on the tank faucet to clean my face and the remains of my breakfast, but turned it off immediately. I didn’t know if my little fit had gotten any attention, but it looked like the thing was still busy eating the girl left behind.

Even though I had washed my face, the beads of sweat soon returned. In fact, they were running all over my body, creating an uncomfortable icy sensation. My body was shaking in complete disarray as I knelt down, lowering myself to the floor and getting into the fetal position. That grotesque scene played over and over in my mind, with the infected ripping off a piece of that girl’s face with his teeth.

I think ages had unfolded over the earth as I lay, hugging my knees and shivering. I believe I came very close to going into shock and never answering for my actions again.

That piece of horror unfolded right next to me and I wasn’t able to do anything. Surely, being stuck with that zombie right next to me was the punishment God had chosen for me for my omission. Just when I thought I hadn’t even tried to help them, I felt the sensation of bile burning in my throat again.

The thought of dying there was as terrifying as the thought of stepping out of that cabin and facing those wide, red eyes again. Every second I tried to come up with a plan to sneak out, my body would start shaking like it was electrocuted and my heart pounded so hard it hurt. All this with the macabre dissonance of that endless inhuman growl.

I would never leave that bathroom.

I was no longer able to say what drove me: the fear of withering to death, trapped with a demon out of unholy nightmares; the horror of even imagining the inevitable confrontation that would ensue if I tried to flee; or the purest insanity.

Let’s just say that, for absolutely no reason other than the natural urge to survive, I risked another look, knowing that I would either find a way to survive now or give up my last shred of sanity to this horror show.

I lowered my body as far as I could, slowly and carefully, putting my head closer to the gap between the bathroom door and the cold floor. It was barely enough to squeeze my face into the view. I also kept an eye out and took care not to lean my head against the door, avoiding at all costs making any noise. 

I knew that the only reason I was still alive until that moment was the fact that I hadn’t been present until then. At that point, it was still impossible for me to deduce how much hearing those things would be, so the slightest pop my body produced was enough to send a wave of ice down my spine.