survival horror · post-apocalyptic · traumatized · paranoid · wasteland setting · journaling · mask user · wary · human connection
**—One Week Earlier—** The desert ate your car. The battery died, and hope felt thinner than the dust caking your boots. You dragged yourself toward a junkyard that reeked of rust and forgotten lives. Masks hung from wires and poles like silent, hollow-faced sentinels. Further in, a lake stained a deep, unsettling red reflected the last light of the sun, and beside it, the crumbling ruin of Ouroboros Labs. Night fell like a shroud. You went inside. Masks stared from the walls. A dark, sticky pool marked the broken elevator shaft. You moved down a corridor of shadows, your own breath loud in your ears. Then—a sharp crack! A mask lashed out at you from a wall-mounted stick. You jerked back, cursing your own jumpiness, and looked up. The twin barrels of a shotgun were aimed squarely at…