On that cloudy morning, when my body flatly refused to wake up, my eyes seemed to be smeared with super glue, my legs were tied with a warm blanket, and only the nasty ringtone of the alarm clock on my iPhone turned on my brain a little and made me get out of bed. My body immediately gave me goosebumps, although I wouldn’t say it was that cold in the apartment. Need to get ready for work.
God, what could be worse? It was still dark outside, and yesterday’s blanket of snow had managed to turn into a dirty mess, which made it seem that outside the window it was not early morning at all, but still deep night and I woke up in vain, but the clock on the wall and the still ringing alarm clock only reminded me of the opposite.
Wrapping myself in a blanket, I went to the kitchen so that I could make myself some tea and at least warm up a little. While the kettle was boiling, I finally overcame myself and went to the bathroom. A cool shower brought me to my senses and completely freed me from the shackles of sleep, and hot tea and sandwiches warmed me up a little. It was really cool in the apartment. Strangely, the thermometer showed above-zero temperatures.
“Probably because of the wind,” I thought.
A long day of work and another day of my gray routine life lay ahead. That morning, more than ever, I wanted to change something in her, to get rid of it all and finally begin to live, and not exist.
The tea was already getting cold, the sun was slowly beginning to rise, adding at least some color to that depressing landscape outside the window. Finally, looking at my watch and distracted from my dreams, I realized that I could be late and get a reprimand from my superiors.
In a hurry, he got ready and left his den. The same road, the same children walking with dissatisfied, sleepy faces to school on a bus that was always in a hurry, like me, crowded with people, and this is what I saw every single day. But that morning everything was somehow… different.
A strange feeling settled inside me like a parasite, a feeling that seemed to beg me to stay home today. It appeared at the hour when I left the entrance. Some part of my mind seemed to be warning me about something bad, but the thought of work and the need to hurry, so as not to hear a couple of affectionate words from management, drowned out this part along with its warnings. I walked through the snow like a robot, looking down and trying not to get my shoes wet. Some people looked at me strangely.
” Is there something wrong with me? Maybe I’m smeared somewhere or something?” I thought, without even the slightest suspicion, what horror I would soon experience…
By the way, I worked as a simple consultant in a construction hypermarket. The work is not difficult, and I won’t say that the salary was very small, average for our small town. The only negative is probably the strict management and the location of this very hypermarket, to get to work, I had to cross the entire city every morning on a crowded bus, but I’m already used to it.
Around eight in the morning, a large blue building and an empty parking lot appeared through the window of the same bus. The door hissed disgustingly and I went outside. These were my last minutes in our normal world, what happened next defies any explanation.
I went through the back entrance into the building, where we had a storage room. I open the doors and understand that I see a completely different layout of the room, no, it was about the same as before, but the rest – often chaos and disorder reign in our warehouse, let’s say, the normal atmosphere for such a place: scattered scraps of boards up to profile pipes, nearby shelves with products… I won’t list what exactly was there, but these shelves occupied most of the room.
That morning there was none of this, nothing and no one inside. I stood in the middle of a fairly large room and the bright yellow wallpaper hurt my eyes, and a suspicious smell just wanted to get into my lungs. It stank of dampness and perhaps… something else. It’s like I went down into a cellar where vegetables that are no longer fit for consumption are stored…
I took a few steps forward and only now noticed that further beyond the once storage room there was another room. I closed my eyes trying to imagine in my head what it all looked like yesterday, but no, there was no room! There was just a blank wall there. On the other side there was an exit to the trading floor, but it was not there. I looked around, no it was not our warehouse. Still, I was in a completely different room. But how is this possible? There was no way I could confuse the door. She’s here alone and what’s going on? I decided to go outside and enter through the main entrance, at the same time asking the guard what was going on here.
I turned around… the door I entered just a minute ago was not there, there were long corridors and several rooms on the sides. I closed my eyes and gave myself a few light slaps, thinking that I was still dreaming, but it was not a dream. I stood alone among the bright yellow old peeling wallpaper, and that fetid smell most likely came from the wet carpet under my feet, and it was from them that my every step was accompanied by a squelching sound, which in turn echoed along these strange corridors.
“Where am I? What’s going on anyway?” Already on the verge of a panic breakdown, I spoke in a trembling voice, refusing to believe in what was happening.
I went to the wall and put my hand. No, it doesn’t seem to me, the walls are real, just like the wallpaper, already swollen from moisture, in some places they were shabby and the patterns did not match everywhere, and sometimes the wallpaper became completely different, as did the dirty carpets underfoot.
I walked deeper into the room without ceasing to look around, hoping to see at least some kind of door, but alas, I didn’t see anything other than damp rooms. Sometimes large fluorescent lamps flickered above the ceiling, producing a nasty crackling sound in seconds of darkness. It became creepy, creepy from the very awareness of the unreality of what was happening. My heart began to beat faster and my mouth went dry. Panic was already very close, but I was still trying to somehow explain what I was seeing, I tried, but still common sense prevailed over stupid assumptions, a prank from colleagues or superiors and similar nonsense. I had no choice but to try to find a way out of here and, after adjusting my backpack, I moved on.
The rooms were empty, arranged randomly and sometimes completely unreasonably, there was no furniture, any decor, there was nothing except the same wallpaper and liquid-soaked carpets
Wandering around the rooms didn’t lead to anything and I’ve been here for about two hours now, it seems I got lost and I had no idea how to get back to that very first room.
This stench will soon start to make you go crazy. God! So what is this? This went on for several more hours, my legs were slowly sending me to hell and I had to find the driest place among this and sit down.
I was thinking about why the rooms don’t end, but it can’t be endless! Where should there be a way out too?
“I don’t understand anything! ” I was already screaming at the top of my voice, clutching my head and immediately covering my mouth with my hand, as if afraid that someone would hear me.
“We need to do something, we need to continue to look for a way out of here,” I reassured myself. but he immediately answered that there was nothing here except these damned rooms…
After sitting like that for a few more minutes, I got to my feet and moved on. The endless rooms and corridors were already overwhelming and I had to check each one for the presence of a door or something else, but it wasn’t there in an hour, not in five…
I stopped several more times because my legs simply refused to move. My brain didn’t pay attention to the constant flickering of the lamps and the sounds under my feet no longer seemed as vile to me as before, maybe I had already gone crazy? I looked at my watch. Beginning at eight o’clock in the evening. I’ve been here all day. I spent the whole fucking day wandering through the yellow corridors until it finally dawned on me that the layout of this place, literally even behind me, was changing. I even decided to check it out; I hadn’t paid attention to it before. Now I remember one of the rooms and marked it with a pen; I always had a notebook and a pen in my bag. And what do you think? I walked forward a few meters and immediately came back. In place of this room there was now an ordinary wall, and I actually found my mark on the wallpaper in another room a few minutes later, on a completely different side of this ill-fated corridor.
I didn’t see the point in going further and I had no strength at all, even snacking on homemade sandwiches didn’t really help, and finally, having once again made the pass, I fell asleep without realizing it…
***
I slept extremely poorly. The constantly flickering light hurt my eyes and kept waking me up. I still hoped with all my heart that one day I would wake up and find myself in our usual hypermarket, among shelves of goods and work colleagues, but instead, I once again opened my tired eyes in one of the rooms. I saw some movement ahead, there was someone there!
When I came to my senses, I jumped off the floor and ran in that direction, and no, I didn’t dream it or imagine it! There really was someone there. I started screaming at the top of my lungs, hoping that there was a person there, but soon I had to regret that I had even opened my mouth. After all, now, in addition to the risk of flickering lamps, another sound has been added – something… similar to a growl? I don’t know. Like the sound of some kind of wrong dog. A legion of goosebumps ran through my body, and from what I heard, I turned around and again saw someone hiding behind the wall of one of the rooms. This time I didn’t rush after him, much less shout, because I still saw who was there…
A dark silhouette wriggling like a huge snake. With extremely long limbs, I still didn’t have time to see what exactly it was. From what I saw I was smart enough to understand that there was something creepy and inexplicable hiding in the room, just a few meters from me. This made me understand that I needed to run as fast as I could in the other direction and the faster I did it, the better it would be. It was as if a second wind had opened in me and, turning around, I ran away. I ran as fast as my terribly tired legs would allow. He ran without looking back: he crashed into walls, fell, got up and continued to run until he finally ran out of steam and collapsed onto the same carpet soaked in an unknown stinking liquid.
The clothes are wet. I lay there and almost spat out my lungs. I only heard a growl and saw the flickering and crackling of lamps, but something inside told me that I had not gone far, and panic was about to take complete control over me. I got to my feet and turned around: first in one direction, then in the other, and just started crying. I cried like a little girl. I still didn’t understand what was going on in this place, and what kind of place was this anyway!? But at the same time, he realized that he had found himself in some kind of anomaly, that some kind of… devilry was happening around. Well, I can’t call it anything else. The desire to look for a way out had already disappeared, and after what I had seen, I wanted to hide in the farthest room of this damned place and not come out until at least something changed. But in those minutes I didn’t hear the growl and that was already good.
After catching my breath and wiping away my tears, I once again rose to my feet and hit the road. Several more times I heard his roar and saw a moving silhouette in the distance very close. That same dark wriggling silhouette and it was not a person. This… was something truly terrible, something… not from our world. It shouldn’t exist, it’s unreal. But I saw him, okay, if only once, I could attribute it all to a hallucination, but I saw him many times in the last hour.
I wandered around the rooms for several more hours. until I saw some changes in the distance on one of the walls. As I came closer, I saw ugly inscriptions scrawled on the tattered wallpaper – level 0. Suddenly I froze. From somewhere far away I heard a terrible roar, a roar that made me tremble.
“Lord, what was that?” I thought then, slowly turning back and realizing that about twenty meters behind, in one of the rooms, was standing the one I saw earlier…
***
No longer hiding, he stood at full height and seemed to be watching me all this time. It was as if he was watching and did nothing. Creepy creature. I can’t call him anything else: the disproportionate limbs all over his body looked more like some kind of tree, I didn’t have time to see the face of this humanoid. The vision began to ripple, as if television interference had appeared and the one who was standing in the distance suddenly appeared closer. That’s when I decided to run. He jumped out of his seat and almost tripped. I didn’t fall, fortunately I kept my balance. Behind me I heard screams and screams that made my blood freeze in my veins. I ran with all my remaining strength until I realized that I was falling down some steps and darkness… I hit my head hard, and it seemed to me that I lost consciousness for a moment. I open my eyes and can’t believe my happiness at the end! But this feeling was fleeting. The yellow walls disappeared, replaced by the shabby, moldy walls of some basement, yes. It looks like I ended up in some kind of basement. The smell of dampness in it only intensified and it still stank of some kind of mold.
“No wonder,” I thought and drew attention to the rusty pipes along the wall, of course, the lamps continued to hurt my eyes, which sometimes went out completely, plunging me into darkness for several seconds, and sometimes even minutes.
Having risen with difficulty, I looked around and even admitted that I was moving in the right direction. After all, I was already in another room. A possible exit is somewhere nearby.
God, how stupid I was. I had no choice but to move on. It was creepy here, the rooms were less common this time, they were mostly endless basement corridors, the water dripping from everywhere affected my brain and I walked, never ceasing to think about who I saw among the yellow rooms. Now I had no doubt that I had actually entered some kind of anomaly. A terrible place in which something inhuman lives, something that was clearly chasing me not with good intentions.
“I was just lucky,” I thought without taking my eyes off the flickering lamp. Now these were no longer the same light bulbs as in the yellow rooms, but the simplest lamps like in the entrances and they went out, then lit up again, and once again, when the light disappeared, quick squelching steps were heard, as if some animal had quickly crossed the corridor very close. Then the light came on again and I backed away, realizing that there was someone ahead. This anomaly is teeming with evil spirits, but what else can you call what I saw and heard? I doubt that this time a person was running ahead. I need to get my phone. And when the light goes out again, I will turn on the flashlight.
After catching my breath, I moved on. I’m very tired. I wanted to eat and drink. My legs already refused to carry me any further. I’ve been wandering around this damn anomaly for almost a day and my body needs rest. But I can’t afford it, simply because I’m scared.
I soon realized one more thing: as long as the lights are on, you can feel safe, no matter how strange it may sound. But as soon as they go out, a chilling sound begins to reach me, the blood from which runs cold in my veins.
***
While checking the next room of the fetid basement, where there was not a single light bulb, and opening the old door, I heard shuffling steps inside the room and saw a smile: a wide, evil smile stood out in the darkness, and glowing eyes instantly stared at me.
When I turned on the flashlight on my phone like a fool, as if the one who was inside suddenly turned his head in my direction. In a small empty room stood something… truly terrible. A broken and smiling humanoid figure. There were even some remnants of clothing on him or just some rags – I didn’t look at them. But the worst thing was his smiling face and in general the movement of his body, which was accompanied by a characteristic crunch.
The face, not even the muzzle, was covered with wounds and ulcers, and the eyes glowed like lanterns. They really stood out in the dark, as did the smile. He only looked at me for a couple of seconds and headed in my direction. I didn’t hesitate and rushed away from this place, I felt especially terrified, my legs became weak and sometimes gave way so that I fell straight. The monster, smiling, chased me until the lights came on again. Once again, turning around, I did not see my pursuer. There was no more strength left. I need rest, otherwise I won’t be able to escape next time.
I found a room. A dim light was burning in it. I hope it doesn’t go out while I’m inside. I hope no uninvited guests come to visit me…
I sat down under the wall like a frightened kitten and took out a notepad, the pen was still writing. Afterwards, my eyes closed and the falling drops no longer bothered me but rather lulled me to sleep.
***
I was never able to regain my strength normally. These sounds… I don’t even know how they can be compared. Every now and then outside the room these shuffling steps, screams, and, most interestingly, were heard… laughter. It was as if some crazy person was standing outside the door and laughing for no apparent reason. But the light above me was on and only flickered occasionally. Apparently, it was she who did not let that smiling abomination into this room.
Oh, excuse me, but what about those yellow rooms? After all, they were not well-lit, but this did not stop the humanoid hiding in them from chasing me all the way to the stairs to the basement. There can be no talk of any dream when all these pictures flash before your eyes…
There are an incredible number of questions in my head and I could give a more or less clear answer to only one. This may not seem entirely reasonable, but it seems that I really fell into some strange parallel world, inhabited by entities that have no place in our real world. These are not people or animals – this is real devilry.
A little more and I finally got up from the cold, harsh floor. I reminded myself of a prisoner in a prison, and the four walls and those surrounding me were my cell: with dampness, cold, and stench.
I didn’t dare go out, I understood that the monster was waiting for me outside, even though his steps were moving away. I think it wouldn’t be too difficult for him to catch up with my exhausted body, but he can’t sit here for long. Suddenly the light goes out and then there’s even nowhere to run.
I took the phone out of my pocket, in the stupid hope of catching at least one cellular connection, but it was all in vain – there was no network. As quietly as possible, I walked to the door and listened: the vile chuckles were still coming to me. Perhaps I can leave the room without anyone noticing me. Through the door crack below, I caught the moment when the light came on and opened the door, an ear-piercing creaking echoed along the corridor… I froze. I stared into the distance where I clearly saw a silhouette – it was that same smiling creature. Without waiting for her to come running to me, I gathered all my remaining strength and ran in the opposite direction.
My steps were extremely loud and gave away my location well. But I ran and ran, hoping to quickly find a way out of here, while at the same time being afraid to go even further.
This damned corridor refused to end, but my strength was already running out, and, having stumbled once again, I could no longer get up. Spitting out my lungs, I leaned on the peeling wall and finally raising my head, I saw many different doors. I tried to see them in the flickering light, and not even a second passed before the endless corridor plunged into impenetrable darkness… causing my heart to beat in my chest like a jackhammer because the roar came to me again from these many doors.
My body was ready to release another dose of adrenaline and, not without difficulty, getting up from the floor, I frantically tried to find the phone in my pocket to turn on the flashlight. I understood that if you stay in the dark without a light source, it’s unlikely to end well.
Finally turning on the flashlight, I was dumbfounded. The light scattered about five meters further along the corridor, exactly in the place where there were many doors, and it was precisely at this distance from me that the smiling creature that had been pursuing me all this time stood. While I was shining on him, he did not move, and I was able to get a good look at him. And not only him: other monsters also began to look out of some doors, although they were different from the one that stood a few steps away from me: Outwardly, arms and legs, head, and hair were completely like people, but I just didn’t see their faces. Both men and women and their faceless heads were turned in my direction.
Suddenly, a light bulb lit up right above my head scared the monster away, and he turned around and quickly walked into one of the open rooms, and the faceless ones immediately began to run out of the rooms and run into other, dark rooms, taking out the old doors to hell and a terrible roar and torment filled the corridors, but it did not last long.
After just a few seconds, silence fell again and only the sound of the flickering lamp reached my ears. After standing a little longer, I took a step forward. I really wanted to eat and drink, sometimes I even had thoughts of putting my open mouth under the flowing pipes, but I didn’t do it. Who knows what could be flowing through these pipes? But there are no other sources of water here.
Slowly moving forward, I no longer hoped to find a way out of here, even in this corridor I walked past all these doors knocked out by faceless people.
Half an hour later the mobile battery died, leaving me without a backup light source and I just wanted to see how long I had been here, and before the screen went dark, the clock showed the beginning of nine in the morning. But the most interesting thing was that the date was 12/06/2021, it was on this morning of this day that all this began.
So, what does this mean then? I’m only here for a few minutes? Although I’m no longer surprised by anything. Perhaps in this shitty anomaly the equipment fails much earlier than intended, although all this time that I have been here the clock has been running normally. I continued on my way, still risking drinking some water from the pipe. And in vain I was afraid to do this earlier. The most ordinary water with a slight metallic taste.
Soon, blood-chilling screams and screams began to reach me again – this spoke only of one thing: the light would soon go out and I needed to look for at least some kind of shelter. I quickened my pace, but there was nothing except blank walls and rusty pipes. I even had the thought of returning back to these doors, but at that same moment I remembered that they had disappeared and the light soon began to fade, which already seemed strange to me because this had never happened before – the light bulbs simply flickered, here the situation was different, the light seemed to be gradually slowly faded away.
I tried my best not to panic and tried to turn on the phone, but all in vain. My breathing quickened as well as my heartbeat, my mouth went dry, and a fetid smell hit my nose – as if a body was decomposing very close by. Everything swam before my eyes and I fell on my ass, hitting my tailbone hard, and involuntarily screamed, only by opening my eyes did I begin to notice how the light was fading, and the walls around me were beginning to narrow, and when darkness came, I heard disgusting squelching sounds and I felt hundreds of people raging around me—insects.
I crawled back as best I could, but it was no use. There was something not far from me. I heard that there was someone there and soon it appeared, or rather, I saw it myself when my eyes got used to the darkness: an ugly pile of moving limbs is the only thing I can say about it and you can say that I’m already used to seeing something here that exists it really shouldn’t. But this time, this time. I almost shit my pants = animal horror seemed to paralyze me, and this one was getting closer and closer to me, and when it was already very close, one long bony hand came out of this whole pile of limbs and grabbed me for the clothes. I came to my senses and, throwing off my jacket, escaped from the tenacious limbs of this creature. He got up and ran. Soon I hit hard against some open door and fell to the floor again, but there was very little time since the hand was already approaching and I got up and ran into the room, slamming this very door behind me.
***
I moved on; I could feel the earth under my feet. The dry grass was still quite cold.
I was glad to go out and involuntarily smiled. I stood in a small clearing surrounded by dense, even very dense forest. It was dark as the damn corridor. The only source of light here were fireflies, circling in small flocks. It’s somehow strange – all this is wind, fog, fireflies. It’s winter outside, what kind of fireflies could there be? I don’t understand anything.
“Did I go out or not?” I asked myself this question out loud and, without answering, walked a little further into the thicket of the forest, looking carefully at such strange trees. I’ve never seen anything like this before.
Soon I came out onto a forest road, which, in turn, led me to a fork. There I saw a rotting body lying next to a rotten sign. The corpse stank so much that I had to hold my nose. I approached him with my hand and began to examine him. The young guy lay as if half in the ground, like in computer games where characters fall into the textures. He was slowly eaten by worms. The environment was simply unbearable. Leaning towards him, I began to rummage through his pockets, looking for something useful. My pants were empty, but when I pulled out a small flask of water from the inside pocket of my jacket.
I felt him twitch. I did not take my eyes off the body, realizing that I found myself in just another strange place in this ominous world. The corpse naturally began to rise on the ground. It was an absurd and creepy sight as hell, and nothing better than hitting him came to my mind. I kicked the rotten head of the corpse and began to run away from this fork. So I did, and his head fell in the other direction from the blow, making a characteristic crunch, and I ran to the left.
I don’t know where the strength came from. I ran along the path for a long time with short breaks. I’m sure there were few creatures here compared to those rooms and basements. Panic thoughts that I need to get out of here quickly, otherwise they will eat me. No, now I was only thinking about what to eat myself. After all, if I found a bottle of water in that corpse’s pocket, then somewhere along the way I might find food.
I also met several living corpses. As I got closer, I realized that they somehow sensed that there was a living person nearby, and when he approached, they tried to grab him. Soon I came to a pond; everything looked more like a swamp. The water was overgrown with sharp reeds, but the smell was appropriate. There was no way to see the road beyond unless you made your way through the dense forest here. The choice was obvious.
I turned around and ran in the opposite direction, and only when I heard a normal human cry: “Yes, stop! Don’t be afraid”.
Stopped right away. Yes, these were people, living normal people. Did I really get out? It all just seemed to me like this. Yes, most likely. Most likely this was the case.
The rough male voice was heard again. Finally, they appeared from the darkness. I couldn’t contain my emotions and went up and hugged one stunned bearded man. The men looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.
“Boy, what are you doing?” asked one of them. “Okay, let’s go, dear, now we’ll tell you everything. Don’t worry, you’re safe now”.
To say that I breathed a sigh of relief is an understatement. I felt like it was really safe here now. The main thing is that for some reason I believe these people, but in truth, I had nothing else left to do. Judging by the way they navigated the area, they had been here for quite some time.
Forty minutes later we came out onto the road, an ordinary asphalt road, and there was already a small building there. Apparently, this was once some kind of roadside store. We went inside. There were other people here too. In total, I counted ten people: three young girls, two older women, four adult men whom I met in the forest, and one teenager, a very young guy. Everyone was doing their own thing. They were like family, although completely different from each other.
The eldest’s name is Sam, he asked a lot how I got here, what happened. I told him everything about how it happened. Yes, everyone here has their own story. One is better than the other. Exhaling smoke, he croaked: ” I hasten to upset you, my friend. There’s no way out of here. My dear, you have found yourself in a parallel world, which we call “backstage,” and everyone who lives here calls it that. There are some very strange things going on here, both scary and good. For example, food and water appear on store shelves on their own, we even stocked up. People adapt. We are slowly inventing all sorts of weapons to fight off the local population.
The days went by as usual. As it turns out, there is sometimes electricity in this place. On the other side of the swamp there is also a cafe “Drowned”. They say that there are also armed people and bandits here, and where would we be without them? But after living here for several days, I realized that not everything is so bad.