Work Text:
GRIAN (ARCHIVIST)
Statement of Vintage Beef regarding his time trapped in a golf course. Original statement given April 28th, 2021. Audio recording by Grian, Head Archivist of the VOID Institute, London.
Statement begins.
GRIAN (STATEMENT)
I know what I’m going to say will sound like another delusional person, but I know what happened to me was real. It was Wednesday, and I was going about my regular day in my butcher shop, Vintage Meats, when I noticed a strange hole in the ground. I got down to look at it, but when I did, something… shifted and I fell through it, and there I was at a golf course. I even had a bag of clubs and a brightly colored outfit that hurt my eyes to look at. At first, I thought that the weird feeling was just my outfit and the one weird blond guy was wearing, but then I realized that the color of everything was… wrong? That doesn’t seem to be the right word for it, but I’m pretty sure that’s the closest I can get.
It was then that I noticed other people besides the weird blond man. I can’t really remember what they looked like but I think there were three more? Maybe four. Yeah definitely four. Maybe a redhead, a green-haired guy, and someone who was, blue? I can’t remember the last person. Everything twisted again and we were all at the tee off. Now, I don’t really play golf, but somehow I understood what we needed to do. What was even stranger was that the blond thing didn’t seem to be playing but would write on a clipboard any time we did something. Even though everyone else looked confused as to why they were there, they all seemed to understand that we should play through the course. It’s hard to believe, but I think things got even weirder from there.
All the holes seemed to twist and bend, and the balls we were hitting didn’t seem to follow what would be considered “gravity” in this place. At one point, it even looked like we were using swords to swing at the golf balls! Each hole even seemed to have some kind of theme, one had a volcano and blackened ash coated the grass, or another with too many sand bunkers that seemed to shift and scream like someone was beneath them. At one of the holes, I can’t really give you a number more specific than between the first and last one, it was kind of muted and misty. I went to pick up my ball from the hole, but the ground pitched and I fell through again. As the world stretched and disappeared I could hear this disorienting and echoing laugh of delight fade as I tumbled.
I woke up laying face down in a golf fairway. I was hopeful for a moment because the colors were more correct here and the ground didn’t seem to be spinning, but the fog was thicker than it had been before. Where I had landed felt different from where I had been before, but I didn’t think it was any better. What was most worrying was that when I looked for the group that had just been around me, they were gone. I still had my clubs so I figured the only way out would be to play through the course. I teed up a ball which reassuringly didn’t spin and bend like the ones before had and I hit it with my driver. I followed the ball with my eyes and the fog seemed to disperse in an area around where the ball went so I could just see the fairway. I just started walking and continued this until I got to the green.
Though the length of the hole seemed to stretch on for far longer than it should have, I was eventually able to see the flag, immobile in a breeze that wasn’t present. When I putted the ball in and looked up, the fog had fully cleared though I think it might have been better if it hadn’t. There was nothing but golf green as far as the horizon. While there were a few sparse trees, they seemed grey and cold. In that moment, I knew I was completely and utterly, alone. The mist crept back around me. I tried to continue playing, but the thought of having absolutely no one around me was starting to get to me. I threw my clubs down and just kept walking on the grass. I kept going for a while but finally decided I would just lay there to die. I lay on the grass a while, and I felt certain that I would never leave this golf course.
Then an object thudded a few feet away from me. A golf ball had landed next to me as if it had been hit. I stared at it for a while and thought that its presence meant I may not be alone. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. This action spurred me to get up and continue walking. Now though, golf balls would occasionally pelt the ground around me. I kept watching behind me, but I would only see the fog trailing behind me. I guess at some point I got hit by a ball and blacked out. I felt this sharp pain on the back of my head, then I woke up sprawled in the middle of a park at about midnight, though I could feel that colors were correct and the fog had left. I made my way back to my apartment and the next day I came here to make a statement.
GRIAN (ARCHIVIST)
Statement ends.
Assuming this isn’t a hallucination, this blond fellow seems to be an important part of this whole debacle. Otherwise it looks like there is not much that we can follow up on for corroboration, though I would like to figure out who those four other people were. Besides this, Beef’s story sounds like he got too dehydrated on a golf course. Something that is troubling is that Beef says he was taken on a Wednesday, and arrived back at night. Then the next day he gave a statement. He gave that statement on Wednesday when he supposedly should have been in his butcher’s shop.
End recording.
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