as you wander the backrooms alone, you notice something strange; some of the wall is scratched, about at wrist height. the scratch is long, running slowly across beige popcorn paneling like a snake, jumping at some points, going straight for others.
You follow it. it's the only thing out of place you've seen since you got here. In the back of your mind you wonder what it could be. Is it bait? Is this a trap? Is there some lurking thing waiting at the end? Wouldn't that be exciting. More likely, though, this is someone else's path. A trail of breadcrumbs in the woods.
It occurs to you you have no way to date this scratch. Is there entropy in this place? What force would erode these marks? Does something clean these walls, or are they so empty they simply don't need cleaning?
You look down at the carpet beneath the scratch. It might be disturbed, those might be footprints, places where someone else had been here. Someone else. Anything else. Maybe it's an illusion, though. The carpet is, of course, a carpet; it's wall to wall, each loop sticking out in its own way. The slight graying, the gentle mustyness of it... is that the remnants of some past use, or did it come into being old and dirty and worn?
You wonder if you're going fast enough. Is the person who made those marks always just a few turns ahead of you? What if they're just on the other side of this hallway? One part of you wants to yell, to scream and get their attention, but something catches you in the throat, shuts your lips. You don't want to break the silence. Maybe you fear something noticing you, but moreso you fear the sound of your voice being drowned out, muffled by endless yellowed carpet and dry paneling. You carry on.
They're probably dead, you think. Does anything rot in here? Are they a blackened, moldering spot on the floor? Or will you find a mummy, some dessicated corpse of a roman centurian or a caveman? Maybe you hope theyre dead. You don't know how long you've been here, of course, but it feels like its been days. Despite that, your hunger, your thirst, your need to sleep... all tickle at the back of your brain, but none are urgent. None threaten your life. None offer an end to your wandering. If they are dead you'll be grateful, because that means you'll die too.
You've been following the scratch for a while. It's faded now, the jumps getting wider and wider, each turn now taking a moment to find the next mark. Did they get weaker? Was this their life fading away, their strength going? Or did they get bored, simply lose hope? You'll ask them when you find them. You'll find out what happens soon. As soon as you get to the end of the scratch.
You do. You do reach the end. You've scoured this room now, peered into the hallways around it, never straying too far from where you last saw the scratch. The rest should be here. The scratch. You go back to where it was, where you knew it was last, but you can not find it. Maybe you lost it. Maybe you stepped into another room, an identical room, and forgot. Or maybe it wasn't there at all.
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