Wrote a short story inspired by the backrooms and my religion (Hellenistic Paganism). My sis said I should post it here. Hope you enjoy! Lmk if you can pick out what the core meaning is.
The Starry One
Written by Jonathan Wormwood
By all means, and I mean by all, did I try to leave this place. Barren, it is barren. I found water, tasted of chlorine and childhood. I found tiles and endless floors smelling of bleach and cleaner. My feet are aching from the walking. ‘Oh the endless walking!’I cry. Every turn I take, despite having taken it before, is different. That wall wasn’t jutting into the walkway and that walkway wasn’t a looping cul-de-sac. I am lost, I am so, so very lost.
I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I was walking, silent. My music filled my ears and filled my lungs, humming in my chest to the tune. My foot caught a stone, round in shape, spherical. I slipped and fell, I should've hit my head on solid concrete, maybe I did and this is a coma dream.
‘A nightmare, an everchanging, looping, constant coma nightmare’ I correct my thoughts, aloud. Nobody is here to hear my pleas. I’ve hugged every wall, touched every corner. What could I have done to have ended up in such a place. In such a desolate destruction of my psyche.
The walls have turned from yellow, wallpaper, to wood, rotting wood, to tiles all white and smooth. Now, I find it has become polished concrete. The floors are the same as the pillars that rise seemingly at random. Had it been a normal place I’d view it as a mall, an area to spend too much money on my friends and feel satisfied. This place has no doors, no shops and no windows. I keep walking. The pillars are multiplying. The silence is deafening and I sing to fill it. Sweet, honey sick thick words wavering through tears rattle my vocal chords. I am like a baby missing his mother, I am crying in these ‘hallways’. I’ve fallen, deep down into a place I can never leave, this is hell. I’ve died and hell awaits. My cries continue, loud and preposterous. Why do I cry knowing I will be left down here? Why do I care if anyone comes? Why do I worry so badly that I will be heard? What is the point to releasing this feeling, it will return. It will come back around and boomerang me into the very hole that got me stuck in this place.
Yet I pursue.
Miles and miles and miles behind me, past the concrete and the tiles and moldy carpet that smells of rot, the hole I fell through. Unseen, but heard and felt. I heard the busy street, I heard the walking of hundreds of feet. I felt the cold breeze and the urge to climb back out into the world. Yet, when I found boxes, sturdy despite being cardboard, I didn’t move them. I could have pushed them back there and stood on them and left yet, I didn’t even try. I hadn’t figured out that these halls change when you close your eyes long enough. Maybe if I truly wanted out I would have kept them open, or traded them. Close one eye at a time and stacked those boxes and left.
Yet, I didn’t.
I stayed, I was curious. I wanted to know more. I felt that maybe if I dug far enough the gods would let me have what I had been craving for so long. Love, comfort, ease, protection, contentness. I kept pushing on. Safety, creativity, joy. My feet feel like they’re bleeding. Abundance, a home, loving family. I stop.
The wall in front of me feels wrong, it looks fake. I push against it and it feels like bricks against my shoulders. Turning around I see that the walls have closed in, I am trapped. This room is closed. This room is closed! This fake wall taunts me when I turn back around, it hasn’t moved! I’m spinning like a toy top spiralling like a windmill. It hasn’t moved! Banging the walls with my fists, trying to break the fake concrete. My fists hurt and it won’t budge. I punch and punch and kick the wall until I feel something snap.
Only shooting agony in my foot, all I can think of. I remove my shoe and find my sock full of blood. Red, the internals of my body, broken skin and broken bone. I wince when I put it in place and tie it tight. Searing, throbbing and swaying. Falling to the ground in hopes I will wake up on the concrete, in the hospital, at home, dead.
I dream.
Soft cotton candy, blankets made of wool. Scent of
Bakery.
Soft water pool.
Lift me in the air,
Higher
than you
I am so warm.
should.
The sun is so warm.
Eyes pry open, enclosed in this space. I wonder if it’s smaller, am I in the same place? Spinning like a wheel, looking at every corner. Bottom to top, top to bottom. The sun isn’t shining in here and I am very afraid.
I turn my head finally, stable on my feet.
IT'S STILL THERE.
The fake wall is still there, taunting me. I can almost see the cardboard corners, wet with whatever is drip, drip, dripping from a crack in the ceiling. Wedging my finger behind the mildewn space, pulling, pulling, prying. The cardboard rips, it drips a deep red. My fingers are stained with ‘cherry juice’ and my lungs are burning with panicked breathing. The fake wall is now covered in slashes. It falls before my eyes and smashes. How is it cardboard, yet feels like a ton of bricks? One little tear breaks it, covering me in red. Shattered like glass, glass that wasn’t already dead. Glass was never alive, but this one bleeds. Am I in a living building? Or am I just within me?
No time to think, only time to dig, a door is sitting in the darkness.
Opening it is no big deal, what’s behind it feels too real. A long, endless corridor of stone bricks. Like a cobblestone road had been rolled around and placed here for me to stumble over. I realize now, they are all round, the stones. Like the very stone I rolled over on. Stupid! I’m so stupid! It’s my fault I’m here! I could have watched my feet better!
I kick the wall causing a stone to fall. I grab it and chuck it behind me. The rage overtakes and I smash, bash, crash into the many rocks surrounding me. Running I am running, sprinting into the next room. The room reeks of cologne and cigarettes. Myself in a million mirrors supplemented with horrors I cannot comprehend painted upon the-
Walls stretch, beyond my vision. I crawl and crawl, foot bleeding still, skin pale. I begin to wail, sobbing at the mess I’ve made just out of a foolish mistake. I’ve re-injured my foot, made it worse, through my rage the same thing that got me here. Storming out from a building, things in my arms. My books, all gone, my music, missing. My voice, hoarse. I pull myself up on what feels like marble.
The mirrors stretch impossibly into soft pools of dark water. An invisible dark sun shines in them warmly, inviting me in. I look at myself in the water and watch the darkness crawl up the stairs and fall. The light moves like shadow here, shifting as if the darkness were outshining it. ‘It is like ink!’ I thought. I remember my foot once again and fall to my knees. I rest by the water a moment, daring to dip my hand in. The shadow crawls like light across my skin, soft like the sun I dreamt of. It feels so far yet right here the warmth eases the ache.I dip in my aching foot and let the warmth cure me a moment. It fades quickly, the pain is immense.
Getting up I realize the entrance has closed on me. I walk, limping into the large beautiful marble arch. The walls around it are a deep burnt orange. Gorgeous like an orange used as an ash-tray. I limp farther past the soft dusty arch. Little vines dance at my back and tickle my neck. The inside is so dark and so damp I can feel it enter my lungs.
Large, impossibly in ceiling, possible in room width and length. Pools like the ones before yet more square and smaller prolong before me. This water licks at the edges higher than the other, threatening to spill in a moment's notice. I softly wander past the soft pools, four of them. A number of death, or change.
Death is change
Change
is death. of an old time.
Death
Death is change, change is death. Preceded by the ending of a beginning and rising-falling action.
I’m losing it down here.
Softly I creep into this beautiful building, temple-like. Tall columns, statues of beautiful Greek gods and goddesses. Athena and her helmet with spear and shield, Apollon with his lyre and bow. Poseidon with a bull by his side. My mind is warping, the bull, this,,,, winding building this expanding prison.
Am I truly alone?
I wander past the statuses, gods alike eachother, tall, everbeyond me. I stumble and come across a tall table, the marble atop is dark. It stands out, sore foot, against the grey marble walls. Atop, red, dried like the foot of my shoe. Blood in the shape of a body, cow or sheep, goat maybe. If a cow then a calf, if a sheep then a lamb, if a goat then a kid. I walk past it, finding there is no way else less I want to dissolve in the warm inky water. The walls echo with my footsteps and leave me feeling lonelier while leaving the statues behind. The halls wind, the walls the same deep dark marble as the altar. The tops of these tall walls, lined with gold, beautiful gold. Patterns of laurel leaves are carved with gaps in the gold, marble leaving bits of alternating color in their lines. The floor is the same black yet less polished. I see scuff marks all across the flooring, I feel it, the rage it took to carve these floors. Then it hits me.
I have never been here.
Someone, SOMETHING is here! I am not alone! Ehu! I am not alone! Someone is down here! I skitter, scatter like roaches. My feet scratching across the floors.
I see no change when I turn my head, this labyrinth confusing enough, will not change on me. I wind and weave, losing myself in the marble and scuff. The pebbles scattered from whomever felt the rage of this place slip under my feet, I do not fall. For once I do not fall! Jubilee! I bash into a wall, excitement pushing my adrenaline further. It shakes and I hear a rumbling. Panic, panic, panic.
Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic
Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic
Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic Panic
That word isn’t real anymore! This being is massive, I can hear it, stomping, hungry. Feet scraping back the paths the excitement pulled me along, Silence is no longer real, the noise I craved now a regretful wish. Regret I am regretting.
ALAS ALAS THERE IS NOISE IN THE LABRYNTH.
CLOSER it draws
CLOSER
I turn my head and see it, horns, and hooves. Man like the body, head of a bull or.. Or an ox I can’t tell I am running. PREY I AM PREY PRAYING I AM PREY PRAYING. Crashing into walls, raBBit heart goINg rabid. Marble never made me so SICK, the labyrinth I see the room before it, it hasn’t left. The statues, the altar, familiar and still unwell. Waiting inky, bloodstained and evocative. BRinging up The oDd fear of comfort that i Once hAd.
The being stops and so does my heart, he is at the altar, shaking legs aching hooves. His hoof, his hoof, it is broken. I fall to my ass, reminded of my injury. My injury, same as his. He is injured. Gently I remove the now Dried a deep red-brown shoe. Checking on my injury it is healing but, healing wrong.
The being, the minotaur sits, he wails holding his hoof. I look at him with this feeling in my chest, this heavy ache, this weight. He to me at this moment is a baby, sorrowing about an injury mom didn’t kiss. I inch, inch
Inch
Inch
Inch
I crawl, hand and foot, broken foot, broken heart.
“Angel of ache, let me tend your injury..” I coo, first words from my mouth in what feels like hungry years.
Snapping, snapping, he snaps at me. Like a lion cub protecting mama. I see how small he is now, tiny baby Asterion, my hands reach his aching hoof. Ripping fabric, pulling off water from the basins I clean. Blood gone, tears being shed. Wrapping with soft clean plush fabric. He is smaller now, fitting in my arms, horns are small fresh buds. Cradling a small hungry baby as though I am his parent. Swaying and swinging a forlorn minotaur. Standing, carrying a crying, furry baby. Slowly I walk, teaching him of the world I wandered, scared and alone. To the mirrors, I see now, my face, lit up by the dark sun. Horns, I possess horns. Horns like his. I wander back farther, seeing the pathways have reopened. I find it, the old spaces of wallpaper and mildew. I do not return, instead, staying by the water, linoleum tiles all about. The smell of bleach familiar.
To swim on your own fruition is joy and freedom. Wet snout and healing hoof, healing foot. Joining in the water, swimming with joy, no worry. The city beyond unknowing about the world below it in the minds of many.
A thunk. A scary sound.
Baby, tall and scary again, bearing his horns to protect his aching foot. Comforting, soothing, he isn’t in need of being a shield, no longer cornered the baby can be tranquil. I hold him, held soft like cradling plush mattress. Soft blankets and bunk beds. Toys, christmas eve, morning sunrise sunset. Bubbles and warm sun. Lifted higher than you should. Grass, trees, swingsets.
Bottles of juice, plates of animal faces. No yelling, no screaming. Playing under setting sun and glowing lights. Moonlight through windows on hard nights, sunlight creeping over mountains on roadtrips.
I am here, he is here. The safety of childhood is his.
Cradling him, memory of the mirror, my horns shielding his little dark oxen eyes from the horrible LED lights, I say only loud enough for us to hear..
“Oh you poor thing. You sweet being of nature and beauty. You are much older and wiser now. Let me show you that not all humans are cruel and not all gods fear that which humans deem monsters…”
Some of the text art got jumbled by tumblr but you get the idea I think.
