TonyT

[Warning: Contains Mature Themes That May Be Disturbing]

In this cosmic horror, witness Fausto's odyssey through the dark labyrinth of the human heart and discover the cause for the strange happenings taking place in Saint Christopher's Ridge. 

Recently heartbroken and looking for comfort, Fausto Merlo meets a childhood friend at their local bar for a couple of drinks and to forget about the world. The night was supposed to end like any other night out, passed out in his own bed and waking up ready for work. However, during this night, he begins to experience traumatic dreams of violence that uncomfortably feel more like memories, another life that he is unaware of. To make matters worse, a strange phenomena begin to take over his quiet seaside town of Saint Christopher's Ridge. At the tone of a siren, people begin to disappear into the night, only to return in forms that don't resemble themselves nor appear to be human.

Saint Christopher's Belly

"Fausto!", yells out Rachel. All her yelling has caused the knocking on the door to get louder. She thinks to herself as she prepares herself to open the door," This is one of the things I was hoping to avoid, I should've waited to tell him and just surprise him with his mom." She approaches the door slowly while the knocks become louder and more violent. However, all of her fear drowns out as she hear a voice coming from the other side of the door, "Fausto?! Is someone home?"


Rachel recognizes the voice and her pace fastens as she angrily walks to the door. She swings it open to find that Alora was the person knocking on the door. She says to Alora, "What do you want!" Alora tries to look behind Rachel to see if Fausto was really home but he is no where in sight, "Oh nothing, I thought Fausto came back home." Rachel looks at her with disappointment and tells her without thinking, "No, no he's not..." Alora confused by seeing Rachel to begin with asks, "Oh... what are you doing in his apartment?" 


Suddenly, Fausto opens the door to the door and cheerfully yells out, "Alora!" She sees him calling out her name and Alora pushes Rachel out of the doorway to go give Fausto a hug. "Fausto, holy shit I thought you were dead for sure!" He smiles while they hug and he says, "I was only gone for the night."


Rachel looks at the both of them embracing each other with anger in her eyes. Seeing them so happy together gives her a nasty taste in her mouth. She tries to butt in, "Yes he was back-" but Alora quickly cuts her off with a loud voice, "What do you mean you were gone for a night? You were missing for for months man!" Rachel begins to speak with an obvious annoyed tone of voice and tells Alora, "Yes he was gone for months but Fausto won't stop saying it was actually a couple of days."


"No not a couple of days Rachel, it was for a night", says Fausto.


Alora begins to take notice that she was hugging Fausto for a little to long by how Rachel was looking at her. She can just see the jealousy in Rachel's eyes but then again, what does it matter to her, they're broken up. However, holding on to Fausto for so long was kind of gross. She let's go of him and ask, "what do you mean you were gone for a night? Better yet, where's Paul? Wasn't he with you?"


Fausto takes a deep breath and begins to explain what has happened. At first, Alora looked at him like Rachel did, with nothing but confusion and doubt. Although the longer Fausto explain his contrived story, it appeared that Alora began to understand what is happening. "So what happened to Paul?", she asked. Paul tells her that basically Paul left on his own out of fear for what it can mean to the rest of the town. 


"And you let him walk away?", Alora asked. 


"It's not like I wanted to let him go. But there was no convincing him, the man just wanted to leave as soon as we saw the missing poster. Frankly, I wanted to leave too but I just couldn't", answers Fausto. He has the expression of shame and says, "I don't know if it was ok of me...to let him go on his own. But I could of tried harder to stop him."


A Moment When Tension Breaks: Part Three