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My eyes open to an abyssal darkness, my body prone on the floor. It takes no time at all to sit upright. A singular bright white light bulb illuminates the immediate area, covering a black, fuzzy carpet, a closed laptop, a sketchbook and a box of tissues in soft light. A cat lay not too far away from where I am, their eyes closed and sleeping soundly.
I grab the rim of the laptop and bring it closer. I place it on my lap. I open the lid. The fans whir into motion as the screen turns on in an instant. A brick wall for a wallpaper greets me, empty aside from the recycling bin and a notepad application. My fingers move to click the notepad.
“Today, I spent time in Black Space. Everything will be okay.”
My eyes scan every entry that I don’t remember writing. Some were detailed, while others were only a singular sentence long. None of them had dates written anywhere.
Though, as I began to read the last one—“Today, I will be…”—my hand suddenly closed the laptop’s lid. It stays there. My lap is warm. It’s comfortable. The laptop turns off. I place it back onto the carpet.
The cat meows for my attention next, like a series of events playing out exactly as written. I get up. I walk to the cat. I crouch down. I pet it. It purrs.
“Waiting for something to happen?” Its voice fills my ears. I feel my head nodding. It purrs again. Something falls with a clang nearby.
I stop petting the cat. I get back up. I walk to the noise. Pale white hands lurk in the shadows. I’m scared. They are not harmful. I relax.
I pick up the knife. Its reflection is shiny. A gray face stares back at me, right eye missing. Shoulder-length gray hair. A black turtleneck of sorts and a white sweater. The reflection quietly smiles back at me. I put the knife in my pocket.
I walk towards the door. Its black with white protruding from beneath the gap in the bottom. I open the door.
The Neighbor’s room. A big, orange cat stares at me from a distance. The room is sizable, full of stuff and loose objects. The room looks dull. My friends, Aubrey, Kel, and Hero, are playing cards. Aubrey looks up. She smiles. She gets up and runs over to me, knocking the cards over in the process.
“Abbi! You’re here!” She says. My name is Abbi? I thought it was
Myself nods. Ab Aubrey smiles again. Kel groans. She turns around and twiddles her thumbs apologetically. It plays like a scene from a video game. I am tasked to find something. It sits next to the tentacle. Her stuffed animal. It looks beat up and covered in watermelon guts. I give it to her. She smiles again.
“Are you ready to go, Abbi?” Hero asks. The name feels wrong. I feel myself nod. Everyone lines up behind me. I am not a leader, but I am delegated to be one anyway. I lead up the stairs. The snake hisses at me, but gives me money.
I open the door. We are on a long highway. Don’t look up. I don’t. I walk further outside the door. My friends follow me. The highway is empty. There is nobody in sight. Where are we going?
“We’re going to the Playground, Abbi!” Aubrey answers. I don’t remember asking. I nod anyway. I don’t know where the Playground is, but I wander. I wander until my head shakes “no”, and then I turn around to a different direction. Nobody is here. A restaurant is closed for reconstruction. A farm is blocked off. Everything is silent. Nobody is here.
Eventually, I lead towards a tall, rocky shaft that goes far, far up into the sky. Despite my earlier warning of “don’t look up”, I feel inclined to stare at how high it goes. I feel sick, like I will throw up. I look back down. I enter the pillar. It feels like I am underwater.
It feels like I am underwater.
It feels like… I am underwater.
Underwater?
But don’t I
I am no longer at the pillar. The sky is bright and Sunny. There are green trees and green grass. A felled tree stump sits in front of me, rainbows where the age was. I am inclined to keep walking forward, so I do. There is a playground in front of me, in the clearing of the trees. Mari’s picnic blanket is off to the side, with Mari sitting on the blanket. Mari’s picnic basket, and Mari’s snacks. And Basil sits across from Mari. I assume they are talking from how Basil’s mouth is moving without sound.
Aubrey, Kel, and Hero walk in front of me. I am left behind. No, I’m not. I walk forward, towards Mari. Something inside me stirs, but quickly it is removed. Mari glances at me and stands. Mari moves forward, off of the blanket. My heart races. My heart does not race. Mari goes to hug me. I don’t reciprocate. Mari moves back to the blanket. I feel myself breathe.
Basil invites everyone to look at his scrapbook of memories we have made in the past. I sit near the edge of the blanket, near Mari. I don’t look at Mari. I look at the pictures. They are full of someone I don’t recognize. Gray face, gray hair. White sweater. Full of expression, opposite of the dull look I had in the reflection.
I stop looking at the pictures. Mari is staring at me. Basil invites us to his house. They all accept, but Mari says she needs to stay here. I don’t know why.
I am the leader again, so I must stand up first. And I do. Everyone follows, except for Mari. Mari stays seated. Mari is staring at me. I walk off the blanket, knees feeling weak. A brief vertigo. Everything is okay. I am normal.
I walk past people, but one of them stops me. She wants to play hide and seek. I don’t. I am forced to accept anyway. I draw the shortest stick. I am the seeker. I close my eyes. One, two, three, four, five
I am stopped. She tells me to count backwards, not forwards. I don’t understand the difference, but I comply. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
My eyes open. Kel stares at me in his poor attempt to hide. He smiles as I touch him on the shoulder. Ah, you caught me! Oh no!” He says. “That must mean I have to help you
So he does. I am being followed.
Everyone else is found quickly. My friends don’t bother to hide. They say I am afraid of being alone. I don’t remember having a fear like that. Talking is not something I can do.
She lets us leave now, satisfied with the playtime. I go to leave but someone stops me. HERO. He says basil is missing. Like the plant? No, the person. Basil. Capital B. Not basil, the plant. Is that not the same thing? No, it isn’t. Do you not remember? Remembering is hard. I know it is.
Boss has taken Basil. He knocks his flower crown off and Aubrey gets mad for him. She draws her bat, pointing it. Kel, with his basketball. Hero, with his spatula. Me, with my knife. It shines in the sun. We fight him. Kel gives him a concussion, I think. Aubrey bangs his knee. My knife plunges into his thick purple skin. He cries out in agony. Nobody notices.
The fight is over. Basil is dropped onto the ground. Aubrey returns the flower crown. basil takes the poster off. Everyone is happy. I lead again towards the forest in the south. I pass by the flowers, Basil talks about them. Enemies are there. Angry, happy, sad. Hero gives me a chart. Tells me to study. I don’t like school. X right right z right right z z z Cute drawing.
We go to Basil’s house. Aubrey and Kel bicker. They force Basil to drop the photo book. They argue. No, they apologize. No, they’re arguing. Basil picks up the photo album and goes inside. We follow. I put the pictures back together. I don’t know how, I don’t remember seeing them, but it works anyway. Basil gets up. Wants to make tea or something.
“One of them fell!” Basil exclaims, crouching to pick it up. I can see a corner of the picture. Dark. My heart rate spikes. I cannot look away. “No, I don’t remember taking this one.”
“I don’t…”
“No… What…”
“What is that?”
Basil looks towards me. Horrified. He shows me the picture. hands shaking. Something is
My body is prone on the floor. It takes no time to sit upright at all. A singular bright white light bulb illuminates the immediate area, covering a black, fuzzy carpet, a closed laptop, a sketchbook and a box of tissues in a soft light. A cat is staring at me with its slitted yellow eyes. Waiting for something to happen? There’s only one way out. There’s only one way out.
My knife is in my hands. There’s only one way out.
Pale hands wriggle in the distance. They catch my attention. I stand. The cat watches me go. The hands lead me to a door. A black door with no white light coming from beneath it. It’s outlined in white. Pale hands wriggle again. Open it.
I go closer to the door. I open it. I open it again. And I open it. Again. and the door open.s
A faint, quiet, dull buzz rouses me from my sleep. My eyes peel themselves open to reveal a darkened room in the middle of the night. The alarm clock isn’t powered, nor is the night light that was plugged into the wall next to the door. My first instinct is to freak out, but eventually I manage to sit upright after some time. I breathe. The room is empty. There is nothing here. Everything is okay.
My socked feet press against the brown carpet. I’m wearing what I wore yesterday… and the day before that, and the day before that. I feel disgusting. My throat’s dry and I feel sweaty like I took a nap when I shouldn’t have.
The home phone blinks in earnest, pleading for me to look at it. I push myself off of the bed and walk towards it. Mom left behind a voicemail ten hours ago.
“Hey Sunny, it’s mommy. I’m still in the city setting things up for our new home. Did you finish packing yet? The movers are going to be at our house in a few days, so I left a list of things for you to do before they arrive. Also, sorry! Mommy messed up! I forgot to tell the electric company that we need a few extra days before we’re ready to move, so the lights might cut out sometime tonight. Anyway… I know moving to a new place can be a little nerve-wracking right now, but I think a change of scenery will be positive for the both of us! I know you haven’t talked to anyone in a while, but you might want to say goodbye to your old friends before we leave. Kel has been trying really hard to get a hold of you ever since we put our house up for sale. He’s been calling us every week for the past few months! He seems a little lonely… Maybe you should pay him a visit. OK, that’s it for now! Mommy loves you! Bye, honey!”
I put the phone back where it was and turned away. I have no real opinion on this, but something about it made my gut twist uncomfortably. We’re moving away in a few days is what her message could be summarized as, and it makes me frown. I didn’t necessarily want to move away. I like this house, as cold and empty as it is.
Regardless, my stomach growls like a starving wolf. I left my room, closed the door. The abyss swallows me in its freezing embrace. I walk towards the stairs, but I pause. I had no reason to, yet I did. I stare down the flights of stairs leading to the first floor, ever extending and stretching. Becoming something infinite, something horrifying.
My breathing’s erratic by the time I come to, hurriedly backing away from it. My back hits the wall and my hand fists the soft cotton vest I have on. Eyes pinned towards the staircase, I swear if I squint I can see something. A blob in the dark. A blur in the mist. But I blink, and nothing’s there. Eventually, my breathing evens itself out. I don’t want to go downstairs today. Maybe the gnawing in my gut can wait until the sun rises. I’m scared.
I reenter my room. It’s the same as before. I lay on my bed. It’s the same as before. Empty, cold, desolate. Like there was supposed to be more in here. I close my eyes. I go back to sleep.
My eyes open again. It feels like no time has passed, but my hunger has only worsened. I sit upright again, I put my feet on the carpet again, I leave my room again. What little downstairs I could see from my position is replaced with a blacker than black, a deep hue that not even man could replicate, yet here does it linger. A haunting red lingers from the window in the top center, illuminating the stairway below. It looks like it stretches on endlessly.
I turn around. I will wait until morning. I try the door. It’s locked. The sting of tears prick at my eyes. I turn around. The infinite stairway waits. With my hand still on the knob, I try again. It’s still locked. And again. Locked. And another. Locked.
I sniffle and wipe my eyes. I walk towards the staircase. The wood sinks deep into the yawning abyss, curling farther and farther away from the naked eye. I grip the railing with both hands as tightly as I can before placing one foot on the next stair. And then the next stair, and the stair after that, and the stair after that.
Hands inch from beyond the veil towards the staircase, formless in color. They slither up the walls, some poke through the railing, trying to grab at my ankles. I kick them away as hard as I can, my breath heavy as I venture deep, deeper, yet deeper.
A knife lingers in front of me. Pearly white, clean like it’s never been touched before; factory fresh. I let go of the railing and pick it up, but it’s not long until my hand grabs back onto it. I keep walking. And walking. I get more nervous. My heart rate spikes. There’s something behind me.
In fear, I turn around, swinging my knife. A large hand greets me, poised to grasp. I scream as it grabs me. I’m falling.
Falling down the stairs, letting vertigo hit me over the head. I’m falling and falling. My neck feels like it’s bent out of shape, strange and constricting. My breathing is fading. The thing above me laughs at me, mocking me. I try to grab onto the railing, but I feel helpless. I feel like I can’t control anything. The knife flings out of my hands, vanishing in an instant. I want it to stop. Please let it stop. Please. Please, please. Please. I want it to stop. I want to go home. I want to see my mom again. I want to see my friends again. I need to see
Close your eyes… take a deep breath. It’s okay.
It’s not as scary as you think.
I can’t take a deep breath, I’m falling.
It is scary, have you taken a look at that?
Sunny, take a deep breath for me. Can you do that?
I can’t.
Yes you can. I know you can. You’re brave like that.
I can’t.
Yes you can. Please. It’s not as scary as you think.
I…
I close my eyes. I take a deep breath.
It’s not as scary as I think.
I close my eyes… I take a deep breath…
It’s not as scary as I think.
I open my eyes. I’m not falling. Something is no longer taunting me. There is no knife. There are no hands. I’m at the bottom of the staircase. I’m okay. Nothing is here. Everything is okay.
I’m... still hungry, though.