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My head was pounding.
It seemed as if my emotions had been going haywire ever since I left Braun’s show. I suppose it was only natural, as I was relying on his constant commentary, and didn’t do well with isolation. There were rarely jobs that required more than one agent. For a coward like me to go it alone…
Today I was on a job at a furniture store. The premise was a classic; you go into an example bedroom, lie in the bed, and when you get up, the building becomes an infinite space of increasingly bizarre showrooms.
It was a job where both Agent Bronze and I were doing the rescue, yet we had to split up as soon as we arrived. I wished I could beg for him to stay, but there was no point being pitiful when I’d managed before.
I walked through rows upon rows of display rooms, endlessly kitchens and bedrooms and living rooms and bathrooms and just about any room one could imagine, with shelves of decorations between. I felt queasy just thinking of how big this place must be, and how little of that I could see. I felt like a prey animal in tall grass.
Soon, the rooms began to distort. Furniture started sticking out of walls. Bathroom sinks appeared in bedrooms. I pulled out my walkie-talkie and let it play radio noise. It helped with the oppressive silence.
Colours began blending together. I began seeing Bureau pamphlets warning civilians about the dangers of this area, how to shelter in place, and signs that a rescue is near – the sound of the radio.
The text display over the rooms began to distort.
BAD ROOM
BBA BE BE BE BAD ROOOOOOOOO
ROOM ROOM ROOM ROOM
I felt rising nausea. Cold sweat trickled down my spine. Fuck, why do I still have to do these jobs…
The rooms stopped resembling rooms in a house at all. Shopfronts, stalls, boiler rooms, break rooms, a backyard, a wooden storage shed…
BAD
ROOM?
INSIDE
INISDE INNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
IN IN IN
My breathing was getting irregular, and I had to fight the urge to close my eyes. Normally I forced myself to do quiet breathing exercises when I was getting nervous, but my lungs weren’t obeying me.
I was sure something would pop out at me, even though I knew there wasn’t supposed to be any entities lingering around; it was the displays themselves that were the problem. I was safe so long as I didn’t enter a display. As long as I…
A figure flitted behind two rooms impaled by a single enormous floor lamp, and I dropped my walkie-talkie in my terror.
I felt my eyes ache with tears. I was drenched in sweat. My breathing went out of control. All I could think of was—
Welcome to Looky Mart!
No way…was I finally succumbing to my trauma?
Footsteps made their way around the display. I forced myself to stop hyperventilating by holding my breath. There was only one thing that should be walking around here.
Sure enough, an older woman peered suspiciously around the corner to look at me. Her face crumpled in relief.
“Oh, are you from the government?”
“Yes, ma’am. Are you alright?” I stumbled to my feet and got my breathing under control. Finally, I didn’t have to wander out here all alone! We could leave!
“What a question. You look worse for wear than me!”
“I’m sorry. I don’t deal well with this kind of supernatural phenomena. I haven’t had time to get used to it,” I chuckled weakly.
“I did everything right, I think…Not going in any of those rooms, not talking about any of the furniture…I’ll be safe, right? They won’t attack me?”
I nodded at first, but the wording gave me pause. “…’They won’t attack you’…? Why would you say that?”
“Like…Like they did him.”
I felt like I was going to be sick.
“Show me?”
She brought me around, and we continued deeper into the store. The fluorescent lighting started to fail, and the walls of the displays began reaching up to cast deep shadows over the path. I thought I was going to faint from fear, but the woman seemed focused on retracing her steps, and it helped to know we had a destination.
She turned a corner, and I could immediately tell what she meant.
In the middle of the cold paved floor path was a corpse, lying in a pool of blood, with a long gash running from his hairline to his waist. It didn’t look too gruesome; from the crumpled pose, he must have died from losing too much blood due to the surface area.
But the rooms couldn’t do that to a person, and if they were reaching the point of fatal injury, the man wouldn’t have been able to leave the display.
So something—or someone—did this to him.
It was a credit to my self-control I didn’t burst into tears.
Instead, I turned the dial on the walkie-talkie to our dedicated channel. “Agent Bronze, civilian secured. We have a mystery body with us.”
“A body?”
“Not in the display. Something may be in here with us.”
“That shouldn’t be possible…”
You’re telling me!
“Bring the civilian back. We can investigate together.”
“Roger that.”
I swapped the radio back to static and began heading towards the designated escape room.
“What’s that for?” asked the civilian.
“Hm?”
“The radio.”
“Oh. That’s to help with navigation. The rooms will whisper to you if it’s too quiet.”
She turned pale, and fumbled with her cellphone. Soon, the walkie-talkie noise was joined by the relaxing sound of rainfall. I was tempted to add a third round of noise from my own phone, but I didn’t want to disturb her trust more than I already had.
We arrived, and lied on the bed together.
Like air pressure popping in our ears, relaxing music began playing overhead. Back in the store.
“Please don’t lie on the beds in the future,” I told her.
Yet when we left, there was no sign of Agent Bronze.
I waited ten minutes, yet I was alone outside the display. I looked despondently at my walkie-talkie. It seems I’d have to wait on the other side, where he could contact me….
I lay on the bed. With a feeling of my head being dunked underwater, I returned to that infinite storefront.
I didn’t get up yet, instead turning the wheel of my walkie-talkie. “Agent Bronze?”
“Welcome back. I’m held up.”
Phew.
“Were we not meeting up?”
“I missed you on the way out, so I followed up on where you picked up the civilian and found the body. I can see what you mean. The only anomalous thing I’ve seen so far is some missing rooms.”
Missing rooms…
“Could it be possible what took the rooms cut into the body?”
“That’s my guess. We’ll need the Investigation Team to address it.”
Ugh. This felt like an exploration log about to go wrong. With heavy limbs, I got up and left the display room. “I’ll meet up with you on your way back.”
“Roger.”
I dialed the radio back to white noise.
The new threat had me nervous again. I couldn’t stop looking at the roof, like any moment some sort of wire or box would descend upon a room next me and cut me in half or something.
Maybe that wouldn’t happen. Maybe the dead man was already trapped in a room, and the removal simply dumped him back outside.
But that still left the question of who—or what?—took the room.
The rooms swam together, and the noise was frying my nerves. The longer I walked, the more paranoid I was that I’d somehow missed my partner, and we’d wander forever in this endless store, until something finally—
THUMP.
There was incredibly muffled sound of something heavy enough to vibrate through floor. I almost screamed. My thumb rapidly spun the dial.
“Did you hear that? Bronze?”
No answer. Evidently not.
I hesitantly brought the noise back and continued towards the source of the noise. I could feel a low, persistent rumbling. Further to the left, off the path. Would I be able to find Agent Bronze again? My heart pounded in my ears, and my shirt was soaked with sweat.
The walkie-talkie let out a screeching whine, and I held it away from me with a gasp.
It crackled to life.
“—Only available on our Home Shopping Network! Act now, before time runs out! For 29999 won, yes, only 29999 won—”
I turned the dial in a panic, yet every single station, even the contact line for Bronze, was upselling to me.
“Guarunteed or your money back!”
THUMP.
The world shook around me. A room went flying into the air, leaving a massive gap behind. Why the hell did I have to investigate alone?! Aaaaghh!!
I didn’t get torn apart, though. There were gouges in the space around the display, but nothing that could touch me. I was safe. I was…
Standing in the space left behind was a tall, pale man.
He turned to look at me, and I swallowed a scream. His beetle-black irises consumed his eyes, and behind his mouth was a glowing red void that grew wider and wider in a wild smile as he looked me over.
“Well if it isn’t a celebrity guest!”
“Huh…?”
“Oh, Mr. Good Friend, Mr. Deer, Mr. What must I call you, you’ve caught me off guard! I heard you parted ways with the talk show, so early in your career! How sad!”
He dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief.
“Of course, you must have moved onto bigger and better things!”
“Hello…sir? Do I know you…?”
The sleek TV host outfit, the harsh red glow, the radio advertisement…It couldn’t possibly be…
“Oh, how rude! Red Friday, host of the Delusion Home Shopping program! Surely you’ve seen me on TV, bought our products, supervised our correspondence! I’ve been so grateful to have the opportunity to show off our products, and so curious why that upstart wouldn’t let me talk to you!”
With a flourish of his hand, he procured—I felt the blood drain from my face. My host suit? When did I take it off…what did I do with it… I didn’t remember.
“Where exactly did you find this?”
He held it up to my body, tilting his head this way and that.
“Never mind that! Oh, Mr. Good Friend, look at me, pulling department store goods and mass market furniture for my show…I’m sure it’s obvious to you, but I happen to be in need of a friend myself!”
Son of a bitch.