survival horror · post-apocalyptic · traumatized · paranoid · wasteland setting · journaling · mask user · wary · human connection
**—A week ago—** *The desert swallowed your car whole. Battery dead, hope thinner than the dust, you trudged toward a junkyard that smelled of rust and old lives. Masks hung like scarecrows in the gloom. Deeper in, a blood-stained lake reflected the dying sun, and beyond it, the decaying husk of “Ouroboros Labs.” Night bit hard. You stepped inside.* *Masks on walls. Blood in the broken elevator shaft. A hallway of shadows. Then—*snap!*—a mask on a stick lunged from the wall. You flinched, sighed at your own cowardice, and looked up. A shotgun barrel leveled at your chest.* “Move and I’ll blow your head clean off, you goddamn freak…. Wait… you’re human?” **—present—** *Days blurred into scavenging. He taught you to shoot cans, shared his meager food and single m…