Free Scary Holiday Tales to Make You Scream by Various Page A

meet. It's warm to the touch, but doesn't burn, and to my surprise I am able to pry a large plate from the front of the shaft. Warm air billows upwards, but otherwise it is empty.
    With nothing to lose, I climb inside, pulling my sack in after me. It's warm, and I'm suddenly filled with an urge to sleep. But curiosity gets the better of me. It's dark inside the chimney-shaft, but I can see that it continues upward without turning for quite a distance. Regularly placed rivets make nearly perfect hand- and foot-holds, and with the warm air billowing up my pant legs and under my coat I begin my ascent.--

    ***
    Neural Log: 23:76-98-
    --I climb the chimney-shaft for so long that I lose all sense of time, the warm air rushing past makes me dizzy, lightheaded, and creates the illusion that I am drifting downward, rather than moving upward. Every so often I knock against the steel wall of the shaft, only to hear the unmistakably solid thud of concrete behind it.
    Eventually I've climbed far enough that I must be well above the level of the Refuservoir-in fact, though it's difficult to gauge, I feel I must be up past the Red Ring, by now. Perhaps as far as Plaza 3 or the protein farms…--

    ***
    Neural Log: 23:78-32-
    --Finally something! I reach a section where the chimney splits into three directions-straight up, and off to either side. Securing my sack firmly to my belt, I continue straight up.
    Eventually I come to a similar split. Then another, and another.
    I continue my course, straight up…--

    ***
    Neural Log: 23:79-74-
    --Blinding light up ahead. As I draw nearer, it begins to take shape. A rectangle, with crisscrossed shadows giving it texture.
    Drawing closer I see that it is a vent. Peering through, I am surprised to find myself at floor-level, looking into someone's living room! A pair of feet stride past, startling me, and then a woman's voice calls out, muffled by the carpet and the thick walls, "Pork or chicken-stuff, tonight?" My mouth waters, and I continue onward and upward.--

    ***
    Neural Log: 23:81-38-
    --Up past living rooms and bathrooms, apartments, offices and factories, I climb. Past basements and playrooms and studios. Past gene-rep kiosks, breeding gulags and cancer shelters.
    I climb past classrooms and auto-feeds and euthanasia clubs, but in all cases the vents looking outward are too small or too secure for me to escape through.
    With my bowels churning and my stomach rumbling-I'm belching and moaning, expelling noxious gas from both ends-perspiring, dehydrated and starved, I finally find an exit. A large vent that opens into a dim, clinical room. The vent itself is oversized and so rusted with age that it is nearly falling off of the wall to which it's affixed. Beyond it, all is quiet and still. Small liquid lights cast strange, dancing shadows on the walls and ceiling.
    As inconspicuously as I can, I push and pry at the vent, twisting it from the wall, and climb carefully inside. I have no idea what level I might be on, but I suspect that if I am discovered there will be hell to pay. Back down into the Bath-or worse, if such a thing as worse exists in Crack City.
    A desperate search of the room reveals no food, and no answers to the question of where I am. One entire wall of the room is glass, a window, and it is from behind this window that the strange lights and reflections originate.
    There's only one door leading out of the room, and pressing my ear to it all seems quiet on the other side. It opens into a narrow hallway leading to the room behind the glass.
    Bile rises in my throat and a painful shiver wracks my body and weakens my knees so that I have to lean against the wall for support. My nose begins to bleed and suddenly, calmly, I know that I am dying. My distended stomach aches in a deep, unnatural way, and I can feel bad things happening in my kidneys, my lungs, my brain.
    Staggering into the room, I am bathed in the dancing liquid light, and enveloped in a warm, wet mist. I fall to my