I have no idea why I deluded myself into thinking that Bobby had much more screentime in Backrooms and people were just gatekeeping his scenes in edits
Paint me shocked when he died 4 seconds into his introduction
Synopsis: You work the nightshift at some laundromat and you discover something that doesn’t make sense.
Tags: No use of Y/N, no specific physical description of the reader except for clothing, CW dark themes, CW panic attack, CW depression, death mention, set during the movie (spoilers), eventual Bobby romance.
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You’re bored out of your mind. When you took this job you thought it’ll be easy work and an easy paycheck. Well, it is when you work the nightshift at some laundromat that only has a handful of customers that are still loyal to the place. They’re mostly old people, whose conversations are either sparse or they’ll be talking your ear off about anything under the sun, there’s no in between. From trying to set you up with their grandson, who hasn’t called them in months, to asking for your help on how to turn the font bigger on their phone. Even so, the customers are rare these days.
It’s an old shop that was built during the early 80’s. It used to be one of those laundry places that cleans your clothes for you exclusively, now people only come by to use the coin washing machines. You barely have to do anything, all you need to do is make sure the machines are running, and to buzz people in when they knock on the door. There have been…incidents in the past so the owner installed the buzzer so you can control who gets in and out. It’s been fairly safe so far in the past three months you’ve been working here. And there are CCTVs all around that you can see on your tiny monitor by the cashier that only opens for Janet, the manager, who does the laundry in the back for the customers who wanted their clothes professionally cleaned.
Sometimes you wonder how the place is still running in this day and age, it’s probably bleeding money at this point. Or perhaps it’s a front for a money laundering scheme. You could only imagine.
It’s eerie inside, the buzz of the harsh fluorescent lights you’re not allowed to even dim, the black and white tiles from another decade, the rust slowly eating at the machines and that same lavender scent from the laundry soaps that you have grown to hate. But the place doesn’t scare you when you love horror movies, nothing fazes you. Still, you don’t dare watch a scary movie on your phone while at work lest you feel like something’s watching you from behind.
Janet’s been here since the 90’s, and will continue to do so until the place closes down. You don’t pity her for the mundane cycle of work she has been doing for decades, you actually admire her for it, she’s consistent at least. When you’ve only been working here for a few months and you already can’t stomach the smell of fabric conditioner and the incessant hum of the washing machines.
The place feels lonely at night, but you’re used to the loneliness, the persistent silence that rings in your ears, your voice remaining unused for hours that you have to test it every now and then to check if it still works. Loneliness is a common thing for you, a security blanket of sorts. A routine that your body and mind is so used to that whenever that routine is broken, you feel off. Weird, like someone took a piece of you but you can’t tell which piece they took.
The pads of your fingers graze your throat for the umpteenth time tonight. An instinct, a mannerism that you just can’t break as you run your fingers around your neck, feeling the phantom pain.
It’s one of those nights where no one has come knocking on the doors. It’s a regular Thursday night, a normal day where the air feels chilly at night but sweltering hot in the morning. Janet just finished her shift and left the place tidy, leaving you with nothing else to do than to take inventory in the back of the house.
The room where not a lot of people have seen is just through the curtain of clothes covered in plastic that obscures the rest of the laundromat is eerie at night. Like a butcher’s freezer with the dangling meats on hooks, but instead of that it’s clothes hanging on a rotating metal rack that shrieks whenever it roars to life. You’ve only been at the back of the store once in the morning and it’s not any better when the heat from the steamer and the sounds from the industrial washing machines gut punches you, with the metallic thudding that grinds your teeth. At night it’s colder, darker, and silent. A place that feels like it’s from another time.
Janet keeps a tight ship, and it’s no surprise that she has all the supplies organized on the shelf. From the gallon of laundry soaps to the chemicals that would probably blind you, she has them all categorized better than a library.
Sometimes you wonder why she even needs you in the first place.
But you still need to do inventory when there is no other work for you to do. You could sweep the floor or wipe the benches clean but you don’t really feel like doing any of that tonight, especially when it’s still so early in your shift. You can always do it later when Janet returns so she could see you doing something other than reading your book that has gotten you into trouble when she caught you, in her own words, ‘slacking off.’ There’s no slacking off here when there’s literally nothing else to do that she hasn’t done yet. You swear she’s every employer’s dream employee, Janet is a whole army.
Blowing a raspberry, you write down the amount of supply the store has left. It’s damp and chilly inside, and you could feel how cool the tiles are underneath your old sneakers. But you don’t mind it when you have your favorite flowery bomber jacket on you. It’s sort of like your uniform here when you don’t bother dressing up nowadays when there’s no one else to see you looking nice. As if you ever bother nowadays, you’re always too tired, too gloomy to try to look your best. You know it would make you feel better if you put on something other than a graphic tee, the occasional turtleneck and jeans combo. Plus anything other than the old bomber jacket that has a permanent orange stain on the cuff.
Taking a sip of your lukewarm coffee that you forgot that you made at the start of your shift, you purse your lips at the stale taste, making a face, before placing it gently on the shelf before you. The ceramic against wood sound echoes around the silence.
You count the laundry soaps.
One, you touch your neck again.
Two, you feel the tightness around it, curling around you, but you know it’s not there.
Three, your breath sticks to your throat as you cough harshly, inhaling air desperately before taking a gulp of the bitter coffee again to stave it off.
Three gallons left. The coffee works to ground you.
Janet would be pissed about the amount of soap left when she goes through half a gallon each day. It’s a mystery how she always runs out so easily when there are barely any customers. You’re starting to think that she drinks this stuff.
You jot down that you need to order more in your notes so you could call the supplier in the morning before going home. Home, you’re not entirely keen on going home when the silence still follows you there. At least here it’s a different kind of silence, and the faces on the wall don’t follow your every move.
While you’re in the middle of writing, your phone buzzes in your pocket, you take it out excitedly, silently hoping that a friend remembered you. But it’s just a notification about a sale on a game you wishlisted. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing of note. As usual.
You feel the tightness around your throat, you don’t let it persist as you take another drink of your coffee.
It doesn’t work this time as you wheeze out a breath, clawing at your throat down your chest, as if you’re trying to cleave yourself open to see your jugular.
Tucking the pen in your ear, and throwing your phone and notepad onto the shelf with a solid thump, you hold onto the only solid thing before you. Your fingers tugs at your turtleneck to let yourself breathe, feeling the roughness of the wool, like barb wires tightly wound around your neck.
The only lamp that Janet only lets you turn on while you’re alone in the back flickers atop her table where she has a dozen pictures of her family including her twelve grandkids. The pictures are of strangers, but you can still feel their judging eyes on your back.
You try to pay it no heed as you inhale and exhale, nails digging into the wood, legs wobbling, feeling the lightning crawling inside your limbs as it freezes your fingers, twisted like tree branches. Your limbs feel numb and yet you feel everything around you.
Your phone buzzes again, another notification that doesn’t mean anything worthwhile. You claw at your skin, leaving marks upon yourself.
The flickering stops completely, and the lights shut off.
It’s been happening a lot recently, and the repair man said it’s no cause for concern even though the massive electricity bill has skyrocketed, bleeding the shop drier.
The darkness should’ve made you feel worse, should’ve made you claw harder until you cut yourself open and reach for your trachea, but it does the opposite. The dark soothes you, enveloping around you as you could see nothing else but the light from your phone.
Slowly, your breathing evens out, and in the dark you feel at ease.
Inhaling deeply, your legs feel like jelly, as you rest your forehead against the edge of the shelf until you could feel your limbs again. Your fingers curls away from the wood, and you shake it wildly until you feel the static under your skin ebb away.
It takes some time for you to collect yourself, to bring every part of you together again. But you manage to do it, time and time again you survive through it.
Taking a deep breath that restarts your mind, you blindly reach for your phone and open the flashlight. Your hands still tremble, but you try to keep them still, opening and closing your fingers around your phone and grounding yourself.
You shine it around you. From the smiling pictures on the small office table, to the old timey rickety closet doors that houses spare parts for the washing machines, to the large industrial machines that you’ve once had a nightmare about getting stuck inside. You find the circuit breaker, rubbing a hand along your face, you walk slowly over to it.
“Again? I thought the repairman fixed this shit.” Mumbling, you talk to yourself, this job does that to you.
Scratching your neck, you feel for the circuit box as you use your phone as the source of light. You feel the cool edges of it as you open the box. There are two lines of switches, all labeled, probably by Janet too. You turn all of it on and off again per the repairman’s instructions. Still, it doesn’t budge, and you’re still in the dark. It would be nice to remain in the void but the doors couldn’t be opened if there’s no power, and you’d rather not be stuck here forever. “Fucker, that’s great.”
Thumping your palm against the wall from your frustration, you suddenly feel a bump underneath your hand.
Blinking, you shine the light over it, palm rising from whatever it is. Only to find a new switch just beside the box. It’s red, different from the other switches and it’s placed lopsidedly at a ninety degree angle. Switches don’t look like that.
“What the fuck?” Index tracing the switch, you flip it open.
Nothing happens.
The humming silence stays, and the darkness envelopes you.
“What the fuck did that repair man do?” You haven’t been here long but you know there wasn’t a switch here last week. Nor the week before that, you would know, you watched the man try to fix the damn thing before your shift started.
Running a hand on your face, you accidentally nudge the pen perched on your ear, sending it tumbling down on the floor, rolling on the tiles as the sound bounces off the walls.
That’s your only pen. “Great.” You sarcastically say. You then shine the light on the floor, roaming it around to find the missing pen.
You practically turn the place upside down but you still don’t find your pen. It’s not under the tables, not under the shelves or even the washing machines. You even lift all the heavy plastic bags filled with laundry and yet it’s nowhere to be found.
Standing up from your crouched position after taking a peek underneath another washing machine, you suddenly feel a draft coming from somewhere. It flutters your lashes, as your breath catches in your throat. It smells odd, like mold. It’s not unusual when the building is old, but what’s unusual is the sliver of light coming from the floor.
Tilting your head, you walk around it curiously.
The light is just tucked in between shelves, small enough for a person to fit through but not enough for a whole washing machine to place over it. There’s a rectangular shape left on the tiles, like something was on it for years before it was taken out. Maybe a water cooler or a space heater.
As you get closer, you feel the draft even more. Maybe there’s a crack on the tiles and it’s letting in some air? But you’re on the ground floor, where would the air even come from? It couldn’t be gas when it doesn’t smell like rotten eggs either.
Pointing your light on it, you crouch down, feeling the warm draft kiss your cheeks. It’s odd, it’s the kind of air that is usually wafting from the back of the laundry shop whenever Janet finishes another batch of clothes. Like steam, but the temperature is lower, but still comfortably warm. It reminds you of the summer evenings back in Santa Clara when you lived there once upon a time in your life.
Out of curiosity, you touch the sliver of light.
Instead of the tile, the pads of your fingers clip through the solid floor. Like submerging your fingers in still waters.
“Fuck!” Flinching, you fall harshly on your behind, grasping as you lift your fingers to your face. In the dark, you see the shape of it. All five fingers are intact. Eyes wide, the sliver of light follows your gaze as you tilt your head from side to side.
You’re not dreaming right? It’s not one of those dreams you have whenever you make a mistake of taking your meds before bed instead of in the morning so you don’t feel groggy. Those dreams were weird and fantastical, sometimes scary but you always wake up after. But there’s no waking up from this.
Wetting your dry lips, you crawl back to it, knees hitting the cold tiles as you loom over the floor. It doesn’t look off, apart from the light in the crack, like a door left just slightly ajar to let the air in. But it’s not a damned door, it’s a tile where there’s supposed to just be hard concrete underneath it.
Swallowing thickly, you feel for your phone whilst keeping your eyes on the floor as if it’ll swallow you whole.
When you don’t feel the shape, nor see the light from the flashlight, your stomach falls.
It must’ve fallen into the floor when you recoiled away.
“Fuck me.” Fingers trembling, you reach inside. Fingers disappearing into the floor, like reaching in between closed curtains or in between couch cushions.
Half of you expects to feel the phone just under it, and another part of you expects for something to pull at your hand. Neither happens. Instead, your fingers sink inside, then your palm, then your wrist, until your whole forearm disappears into the floor.
You wretch your arm away, panting and grasping at your hand checking if it’s still attached to you.
What did you just discover?
You need to get your phone back, and just as you’re about to decide to just leave it there and just get another that will most definitely have you scrounging for money to buy food, you hear the unfamiliar yet unmistakable sound of your ringtone.
It’s a soft ballad, a favorite of yours, one that you chose so it’ll be unique, just in case someone calls you, you would know it’s yours. The song is muffled underneath the floor, as if it’s merely under the sheets on the bed, or ringing from a different room.
The song continues, and as you take a deep breath, you brace yourself onto the shelves beside the space on the floor and plunge your head inside like you’re diving in.
The song sounds nearer to you, and instead of the dark, you’re enveloped in sickly yellow. It almost blinds you at how bright it is inside. It’s all yellow wallpaper, yellow carpet, and the smell of lavender is replaced by the stench of damp carpet and mold.
You’re looking down at the floor, as if you’re inside the ventilation and looking straight down from the grid ceiling. Until you realize that you actually are looking from the ceiling. You’re upside down as vertigo scrambles your brain, hair dangling from your head, feeling the bile rise up.
You have no words as you feel the awful feeling creeping on your chest and up to your throat again.
Recoiling away, your eyes take a while to adjust to the absolute darkness around you. There’s no yellow anymore, just the darkness of the laundry shop.
Your fingers tremble, and your legs shake. Instead of standing up and pacing the floor like anyone else would do, you brace yourself once again, and dip your head in.
Your phone stops ringing, and you finally see it atop a pile of laundry that smells faintly like sweat. The screen is cracked from the looks of it, but it still works as it lights up for a moment. You can’t make out what it says. The curiosity gnaws at you.
Looking around, arms getting tired beside your head, you see a weird interior, like a house that hasn’t been moved into if the house was made by a drunk architect.
There are random walls sticking out, a half wall in the corner, two hallways leading to more yellow wallpaper, and a washing machine half embedded into the wall.
You feel the same warmth on your cheeks you felt from the draft. Looking down at your phone, it’s too out of reach for you.
You have to go down.
One minute you’re staring at the floor from atop the ceiling, the next you’re gathering blankets from the pile of laundry that still hasn’t been picked up, it’s been there since you got here, and you doubt it’ll ever be picked up when it’s starting to smell like a closet. You tie each end together tightly, testing it as you tug at every knot. You have the foresight to make footholds on it to make climbing up and down easier, you’re no professional athlete. It takes nine sheets to make a long rope of mismatched fabric. And you manage to do it all in the dark while only using the moonlight from the small window behind one of the machines.
You tie the end of the blanket onto the handle of the machine, making sure it’s all secured. All those years learning how to sail with your grandad has finally paid off when you’re using the same knots he taught you. You hated those days under the sun where your skin cooked, and the salty water that splashes on your face stings your eyes. Back then you didn’t know how good you had it, sometimes you wish that you’ll sail again with him and not complain this time around. That you’ll actually enjoy the time you have left with him.
With the bundle of sheets in your arms, you toss it onto the weird hole.
It unfurls quickly as it falls inside, the rope turns taut as it finally reaches below. You wipe your clammy palms onto your jeans before taking a peek inside. The length is just right as the other end dangles just above your phone.
It’s now or never if you ever want to see who called.
With trepidation, you climb down slowly.
The sheets creak under you, and with every sound, you take a pause and stop breathing. If this thing breaks you’ll be stuck down here forever.
You’re about halfway through when the smell of damp carpet gets stronger, and the humming of the light grinds your molars together.
With a careful grip and making sure that your feet are inside the footholds you made, sweat drips from your brow, as you take deep breaths in between climbs. You’re almost on top of the hill of clothes when your sweaty palm misses the rope.
“Oh, shit—!”
You fall backwards, dangling upside down as your foot is caught in the loop of the fabric. It saved you from a nasty fall onto a pile of dirty clothes, but your ankle aches.
Breathing hard, you fold yourself on the rope, trying to untangle your foot from the loop. You struggle, feeling the ache in the small of your back and your muscles straining under your own weight. The fabric makes an awful ripping sound, and you feel your soul leave your body, freezing in place. You brace for impact, but the makeshift rope remains hanging from the ceiling.
You look up, and everything is still in place. You don’t waste time climbing down the moment you get your foot unstuck.
You fall on your back, groaning at the dull ache from the landing.
The clothes under you smell terrible, like laundry that has been left in the basket for months. Sweat clinging to the clothes, stains dotted all over, and the fabric has turned rough under the touch. Standing up, you cough out the smell and cover your nose. It feels squishy underneath the soles of your shoes as you pick up your phone immediately and put it inside your pocket.
You’re supposed to be climbing up and getting the fuck out of the yellow hell. Instead, your eyes roam around the space, looking at the dreamlike place and feeling the odd warmth on your skin.
The place feels familiar almost. Like you’ve been here before, in a dream perhaps?
The air around you feels stale, like an attic that hasn’t been opened in years. Dust particles drift around you like fireflies. But it doesn’t make your skin itch, or get a sneeze from you. It just drifts there in the still air.
You tilt your head up and see a regular grid ceiling where the rope is dangling from, it’s undisturbed, like how the floor was in the shop when you placed your hand in. Like a surface of water letting you enter.
Taking a step back, you hear a crunch underneath the sole of your shoe. You lift your foot away, and see that your pen is broken, ink flowing out of the cartridge and staining the clothes around it.
Your pulse quickens at the sight. A hand reaching for your chest as you massage it.
With careful steps, you go down the pile of clothes. Some of it falls from the heap as you make it to solid ground.
A chuckle escapes your throat as you feel the unease that wedges itself in between your shoulder blades and feel it settle there. You don’t belong here. You shouldn’t be here. And yet you stay. Just like how you’ve done it in your life. You stayed despite not being needed, despite not belonging anywhere.
Something catches your eye, and you pick up a t-shirt laying beside your foot. It’s one you recognize from one of the customers that came in weeks ago. You would recognize it because you remember it fondly, you even once saw it in a dream. The owner was a guy your age, sandy blonde hair, sunkissed skin, the kind of man that wouldn’t have looked at you twice. But he was there, doing his laundry in the middle of the night while asking about the town, your day, and everything under the buzzing light. He was nice, and the conversation was easy, but he never went back. It was a fleeting piece of something that could’ve been, something that might’ve made living worthwhile, someone that would’ve made you far happier. Maybe you said something weird, laughed at his joke oddly, or you didn’t look into his eyes enough, whatever it is, it wasn’t meant to be. He was out of your league anyway, he would never have gone out with you in your flower bomber jacket and old blue converse that doesn’t have laces in it when you never bothered to replace it after the hospital took it during your last stay.
Why are you still here?
You discard the shirt atop the pile, then you see it— your own bomber jacket, it’s right under where the shirt was and the sight alone makes your heart stop. It’s the same piece, the same flowery pattern, pink cuffs and even the same orange stain on it. But it looks off. They’re almost identical, save for the pattern being wrong, a different shade that is invisible to the eye unless you look closely. And the flowers on it are lopsided, printed wrong, like a piece of paper jammed inside the printer in the middle of it printing and you suddenly yank it out. The peonies are stretched, the leaves are melting on the stems. Like someone tried to draw it from memory with water colors that were too watered down.
Rubbing at your neck, you let a shuddered breath out. You then take out your phone to open the camera, and you get a glimpse of the missed call on it, it’s an unknown number and beside it reads, ‘suspicious’ in big red letters. Coming down here was another disappointment.
Frowning, you open your camera instead of wallowing. You film the space, from the ceiling where you came from, to the details on the wallpaper and the hill of clothes.
The place looks like an abandoned office space, the ceiling and the lights on it reminds you of one. The damp carpet underneath your feet squishes with every step, the soles of your old shoes could feel how chilly it is, how off it feels. It feels like skin that was out in the snow for far too long.
As you move forward carefully, still filming, and taking quick peeks at your screen, the image looks as clear as day. This place is real, and you’re exploring it like how one would explore a friend’s house for the first time. Quiet steps, making sure you don’t bump into anything that could break lest you get kicked out of the house before you could even hang out.
Your hand touches the walls, it feels smooth, the wallpaper doesn’t feel weird, it’s room temperature, a tad colder probably, but nothing out of the ordinary like you thought. But as you stay still, feeling the wall, really laying your whole palm atop it, there’s a vibration underneath your skin. Like a hum, like the place breathes.
It sings.
Slowly, you move your head towards it, it calls to you. Forehead resting against the yellow wallpaper and you just breathe. The stale air, the damp carpet, and just let yourself breathe to the rhythm of the humming as it resonates within you, within your soul.
Eyes closed, your mind is tuneless and quiet. For the first time in a long while, your mind is silent. No heavy bone crushing thoughts that you’re used to, no anxieties, no fear, no loneliness. Just a clear head and the song of the walls.
You stay there for a moment, letting the song ease you, letting the yellow wallpaper embrace you. You have no idea how long you stood there, relaxed, unmoving, breathing, but you’re in no hurry.
The sudden shuffle of clothes flinches you awake. Your hand that holds onto your phone moves on instinct, turning towards the abrupt sound.
You see nothing at the end of the hallway, just more yellow wallpaper, and a random road sign— A caution falling rocks warning that is mirrored, the rocks looks too smooth from what you’re familiar with, it’s wrong.
Glancing at the wall again, you reluctantly push yourself away and walk towards the sign. The light above you flickers, just one, before stabilizing over you.
You don’t feel scared, you’re more curious than terrified. But you should be as you see wires on the floor. The cables are cut on your end, like a rat ate through it. You follow it, leading to a room with thick cables that runs into it with three walls and a jug of laundry bleach sticking out of the wall.
You’re more concerned about the wires as you film it, following it as you end up with a wooden wall. Not yellow wallpaper, just a piece of plywood on the wall that looks like someone placed it in the crevice to block whatever the source of the wires are.
There’s a shiver down your arm, and you feel eyes on you.
Craning your neck up, you see a camera, an older type of CCTV, like the ones you see on an old heist movie from the late 80’s. Tilting your head, you lift your phone and film it right back.
The camera doesn’t respond, the red light blinks, but it doesn’t move. Whoever’s behind it, it knows you’re here. And they may be behind the wooden wall.
You try to push it with your shoulder, but it doesn’t budge. The plywood is thicker than you thought. Your knuckles knock on it, the sound bouncing off the walls.
You should head back.
But you don’t, it could be the curiosity that makes you stay, or the feeling of ease that lingers in your marrows. Whatever it is, it makes you continue onwards and turn towards the jug and turn the cap open. Liquid spills on the floor, not teal blue or light purple that you’re familiar with, it’s black, oozing thickly down on the floor and onto the tips of your shoes.
Taking large steps back, you look at it with curious eyes, filming the phenomenon on your phone. It doesn’t smell like anything, it doesn’t smell like anything at all.
The goop ebbs on the carpet, crawling over to you as you try to avoid it. “Fuck… what—” your back hits the wall with a hollow thump. And you watch as the ooze seeps into the wall, like how a drain would.
You follow it, knocking on it, hearing the hollowness. There’s a false wall no bigger than a laundry basket. Pushing it open, it falls and reveals another room inside.
That shouldn’t be possible when the room next to the wall is where the pile of clothes were, not a room with a lone ironing board in the middle. You even check it, you go back to the place you fell from and look at the wall where the hole you opened was. It’s odd. It’s against logic. Nothing here makes sense.
And you shouldn’t be crawling inside it either. But you are, because for the first time in your adult life you don’t hear yourself telling you no, you don’t hear the doubts crawling the crevices of your mind. You don’t hear anything, it’s quiet in there, and you finally get to do whatever you please.
So you go in when you shouldn’t be, you touch the too long ironing board when you shouldn’t be. And you look up to where a ceiling is supposed to be, only to find more yellowed wallpaper and hangers, dozens of them. The lights are on the wall to your right, like the whole room was tilted at an angle, even the floor is lopsided, making you fix where you’re standing if you don’t want to slide down. One of the ceiling grid lights is left open, revealing the same room you first stumbled upon. The blanket rope swings from the ceiling, and the sight of it doesn’t bother you when it would, when it should’ve, your mind is calm at the sight of a rope dangling. Instead of it making your insides crawl.
You film everything in the room, at how stretched the ironing board is, at the shoes glued on the floor beside it, at the walls and at the dangling metal hangers above.
This place is weird and out of place, and yet you feel calm here, at ease. Maybe it’s the residue from the humming walls, or the air that shifts around you, but whatever it is, it feels more like home than home does.
There’s a sound of liquid being disturbed from the other side, where the wires were, where the ooze drips from the crawlspace you went into.
There’s that shuffling of fabric again. Like the sound of a nylon windbreaker rustling against itself along the wearer’s movements. This time it’s accompanied by wet plops of feet against a puddle of water.
Then a shadow, too long to be human, too tall, too odd.
You’ve outstayed your welcome.
You move immediately, not even looking back towards the sound as you shimmy into the hole of the missing light and it spits you out into the hill of clothes.
Pocketing your phone, you climb up the slope of fabric, like climbing up a sand dune as clothes fall from the pile every time you go up.
You make it up to the rope, and you look back, you don’t know why you looked back, but you see it. A glimpse of a figure, a shadow, merely a shadow that moved before you could register it as such.
Inserting your foot into the footholds you made, your attention is taken by the t-shirt again, the old comic shirt that the man you talked so easily with wore. You take it, shove it in your back pocket and start to climb up.
You make quick work of it, lungs stinging, arms aching as you heave yourself up back onto the laundromat floor.
The cold tile hits your cheek as you rest on it. The air doesn’t feel stale, there’s no damp carpet where your shoes sink in, and there’s no humming, no calm vibrations that quiets your mind.
Your head fills with thoughts again. Worries, fear, the past, the future, everything that gnaws at your insides and eats at every bit of your soul.
The light flickers open.
Turning your head at the floor where a whole world lies under, a creeping smile tugs at your lips.
You’re going back in there.
—
The video you took plays on your phone as your screen lights up the living room. You study it, review the footage and replay every second to memorize every detail. If you’re going to go back, you’re going to need more than a fifteen minute video of it. You need to feel the quiet again.
No matter how much you zoom in on the figure peeking over the wall when your eyes were closed from the footage, you couldn’t see whatever it was. It bothers you that you don’t know, maybe it’s not a threat to you?
It’s a new discovery, something that you could show people that, ‘hey I found this, I discovered this!’ It’s something that could change your life, make a name for yourself, something to remember you by. A legacy. The quiet, the song of the walls could help other people too.
So you hid it, pushed a shelf over the hole in case Janet accidentally falls in. You don’t want her to fall in, her poor back wouldn’t survive it. So you took care of it, made it seem like you didn’t just fall into another world like Alice. You got rid of the rope you made and folded it neatly back to where you found it. And once you were finished hiding everything, the sun was already rising outside. You were merely there for fifteen minutes, you made sure of it, you checked the footage and it says that you’ve only been filming for fifteen, not missing a whole six hours of the day.
Time could be moving differently there. If it is, then you’ve discovered something that has more potential than you thought.
The yellow rooms made you study physics, it made you read underneath the lamps of the library the moment your shift ended. And the more you read the more you understand how the world works, but it makes you understand what you discovered less and less with every passage. It shouldn’t be real, it shouldn’t even exist, and yet you have the proof, you have the footage and you have the shirt that is now hanging behind your bedroom door, smelling like your citrus detergent.
It stayed solid, real, and it’s another question answered.
But you have more questions, questions that are dying to be answered. If only your mind quietens enough to let you think.
The next week you come back to the shop with a backpack filled with supplies, as you wear the shirt under your bomber jacket, and a pair of running shoes that have thicker soles.
Janet didn’t give you a second look, nor paused at the backpack you’re lugging around. She said her goodbyes, left a note of the things you needed to do and left.
For once, you’re happy that you’re alone. You close up shop, write a note on the door that says you’re on lunch break and with a rope around your waist, a real rope this time, a rope for rock climbing, a rope that is rough against your skin— you move the shelf away and descend back into the yellow wallpaper with determination.
The song from the walls quietens your mind better than the meds could the moment your feet hit the hill of clothes. You feel like yourself, the version of you that wasn’t broken.
It takes a while for you to leave the first room, you sit by the wall, ear placed upon it as your eyes close. It rumbles your chest with warmth as it sings its song, it lets you sleep, a dreamless slumber you’ve been wanting since you got out. It’s quiet here, despite the hum of the walls and the lights, it’s quieter than your mind. So you sleep, and wake up to the alarm on your phone that you set to make sure that you don’t stay for too long.
That continues on for weeks, you go down the rope, sit on the carpet, right where it’s warmer, right where it’s not damp, right where it got used to the shape of you as you sleep with your head upon the sickly yellow.
Sometimes you’ll speak into it, secrets you’ve never told anyone, your worries, all the thoughts that never leave you alone. And it listens, it doesn’t judge, it doesn’t make you do exercises that don’t make a dent in your frenzied mind. And it lets you sleep, for once you have the energy to face the day, you’re far happier that even Janet noticed it. And you started your hobbies again, you cleaned your apartment, you washed your hair more than once a week, and you started going on walks just to feel the sun on your skin again.
Nothing disturbs you here, nothing wakes you up. So you stay, you sleep, and it welcomes you each time.
You never missed a day of work, a perfect attendance and Janet is none the wiser.
On the second month of discovering the backrooms, one you dubbed it when you found it in the back of the laundry shop, something else greets you other than the hum of the walls and the lights.
Instead of the chewed up wires, you see a figure in the hallway. It doesn’t move but it speaks. Different languages that rotate every minute. They’re greetings, loud and brash that it overshadows the song of the walls.
It angers you, it’s a disturbance to the peace you found.
So you walk towards it, coming face to face with a life size cut out of a caveman with a speaker in its chest. You rip the head apart with your bare hands, but the speaker still plays the teeth gnashing noise at a dissonance.
You walk towards the wires, step over the ooze on the floor and take the hammer from your belt, one that you picked up from the rusted tool box in the corner of the laundry shop you always brought with your supplies. It’s hefty but all it takes is a good swing. And you raise it up high, bashing at the wooden wall.
It’s cathartic, freeing, as you beat up the wall into shards of splinters.
You make a sizable hole, enough for you to fit inside and shimmy through despite the chunks of wood snagging at your jacket.
What you find is a whole new room. It looks like an expansive living room, where a balcony is raised up high, and a curved staircase leading to nowhere. But that doesn’t concern you as much when you see a table in the middle with tech you can’t recognize. The place is a mess of wires and stuff you have no idea how to operate.
You do recognize one thing, a CB radio, the same one your grandpa had in his sailboat. The light is on, and despite better judgement, you take the radio and click it open.
“Hello?” You talk into it as it whirrs awake. Your finger leaves the button as you listen for an answer on the other side. You’re only met with static. “Who is this?”
Still static.
“Worthless piece of shit.” You curse under your breath, tossing the radio down onto the table with a clash of metal.
Turning towards the place you came from, right in the crevice, you hear the voices from the speaker, then silence as shards of the caveman cutout are ripped to shreds violently by something hidden behind the wall.
Eyes wide, you turn and run.
You sprint towards the only place you could, right in front of the table is a niche in between two walls, and a light at the end. You follow the light, bolting into the crevice sideways as the walls between you make you claustrophobic.
You don’t stop as you hear the familiar shuffling of fabric right behind you, its footsteps are quiet, as if it’s afraid to be seen. Running into a new hallway, passing by a banner, you glance at a chair half embedded into the wall right beside a ship’s wheel and a trail of blood.
Turning a corner, you don’t look back as the shuffling of clothing turns eager, faster, closer.
There’s an opened door to your right, a room with a beach on the walls. You don’t go in. Something inside you tells you not to go in. The wall hums at a low dissonance, and you follow it instead, you turn left, past another hallway with a half wall in the middle of the room, past a mirrored stop sign, then over a large room with a pile of furniture stacked on top of each other.
The song of the walls persists here. But you don’t stop to listen this time around.
Heaving, hands on your knees, you’re lost.
“Motherfucker.” Panting, sweat dribbling on your brows, you keep running as the shuffling continues on, not giving you reprieve.
Your heart beats a thousand miles per minute, you run into another caveman, speakers bouncing around the walls as you run past it.
A chair sticking out of the wall hits your hip in a harsh thud that will surely leave marks on your skin. But you persist, you run through lopsided rooms, warm rooms, cold rooms, past a hallway with green light, past another that has a single red balloon floating inside.
Then it happens, you weren’t looking where your feet would land, and you fall.
You fall ten feet, landing with a harsh crunch that has you screaming in pain. Your shoulder blooms with blinding pain as you writhe on the damp carpet. Tears pour from your eyes as you heave in place, clutching at your shoulder.
For a minute you gather your strength, breathe in and out before opening your eyes.
A swinging rope greets you. Not the rope you brought inside, a rope of hemp, a rope that you used for the sailboat dangling just inches from your nose. It’s broken in half, frayed at the edges, your throat closes in on itself as you frantically crawl away. Your backpack hits the wall, and your heart stops at the sight of a fallen chair beside the swinging rope.
There, just next to where you were laying down is the other half of the rope— a noose.
Heaving, hands on your throat, you cough, trying to get rid of the stone that is lodged in your throat.
Then there’s hands on you, several.
You didn’t hit a wall as a curtain of white hair falls over your face, and you see her.
Janet, but not entirely Janet. It wears her face, distorted, like a screen glitching mid nod, three sets of eyes, four noses, and two mouths. She smells like mold. And she’s just mere inches away from your face.
A scream rips from your throat. Scrambling away, you fumble on two feet.
Janet looks at you, no, not Janet, this Janet has needles sticking out of her arms, four, four arms. Faces melding in her middle, you recognize some, her grandkids, her children, and one that is frozen mid scream, all painted in the same navy blue uniform she always wore.
“Janet?” She doesn’t run towards you, just tilts her head, eyes not truly looking at you, but through you, like the real Janet.
The rough hemp slides into your palm, the noose laying just underneath your skin.
Your throat begins to close up again, until the crinkling of fabric bounces off the yellowed walls.
Fake Janet turns away abruptly, face planted right on the wall, hiding from what’s coming.
On wobbly feet, you run once again.
Weird rooms whizz past you, one filled with old couches, one with broken cameras, one with two doors placed side by side, and one that has the stench of death permeating from it.
You have no idea where you’re going, you should be tracking the places you’ve been so you could backtrack and get back to the laundry room, but whatever’s chasing you doesn’t grant you reprieve.
There’s a door in front of you, it’s painted in all black, and it’s the only thing at the end of the hallway so you go in.
You fall once again, three feet into a bright red hallway that stretches on both sides.
Groaning, and in extreme pain and exhaustion, you’re starting to regret your choices, maybe you should’ve just taken your meds today instead of going back here. Instead of listening to the warm song of the walls. And now you find yourself in a dirty and dilapidated, in what looks like a hospital hallway with flashing red lights.
The moment you stand up on two wobbly feet, mouth feeling dry, lungs on fire, an alarm sounds out. An alarm that rings in your ears loudly, bursting your eardrums.
Your palms land on your ears, cupping around it, trying to quiet it down. But as you look around, you see them— shadows, figures, large, small, tall, wide. There’s several of them, all gunning for you from the end of the hallway.
“Fuck me.” You sprint away, dodging everything from wheelchairs, metal tables, to filing cabinets.
A corner of a table hits you in the same place on your hip, and you wail in pain, limping, but you don’t stop, you keep running.
Screaming, your legs are on fire, muscles aching, a stitch blooming on your side as you feel the fatigue turn your bones into jelly. You’d give anything to be at home, even if it’s quiet there, even if it’s lonely there.
And yet you persist, running, dodging, weaving in between cabinets as you see the door at the end of the hallway. The exit sign blinks at you, and you run faster, dragging your sore feet as you bust through the door and into water.
The door shuts behind you, no more red flashing lights, no alarms, just the sound of something slithering and wheezing through the door you came from.
You turn your head at it, face drenched, clothes damp, and you see that the door has disappeared. Sunk back into the wallpaper.
Heaving, you lay in the puddle, shaking in pain and exhaustion. There’s a sailboat half melted into the floor, bearing the same name of your grandfather’s sailboat— ‘princess,’ he called it, because before you came along, it was his princess. Tears sting in the back of your eyes, turning your vision blurry.
A pair of shoes appears in front of you, it’s familiar. You don’t run this time.
You’re too tired to fight, too tired to run. So you stay there. Waiting for whatever’s in front of you to end your life.
But it doesn’t, it stands there, staring down at you with those familiar eyes, and yet an unfamiliar face.
“Grandad?”
—
You stay inside the half melted sailboat on the bed you used to sleep in, on the same pillow that still has the familiar scent of the sea. But it still feels off, the mattress is too firm, and too cold, and the walls are painted green, when you remember it being blue. The same blue as the sea. Even the glow in the dark stars your grandfather helped you put up on the ceiling looks wrong. They’re not really star shaped, like someone who has never seen stars tried to draw it.
Your grandfather, or whatever stands beside the ship’s wheel stays there, unmoving, not truly looking into your eyes.
It appears that he doesn’t need to sleep or eat, he just stays there, a hand on the wheel, frozen in time. Standing still, too still to be human. Whenever his back is to you, you could just imagine that you’re twelve again, sailing with him as he sings off-key while you eat a pack of sour candy and read a comic to pass the time.
Whatever this being is, he doesn’t seem to want to hurt you despite how odd and terrifying he looks. His clothes are wrong, buttoned wrong, the wrong shade of blue, just wrong.
He just stays there on the wheel, sometimes he’d move around, steps on a puddle, turns away to look at the boat, then he goes back to the helm again. Sometimes he’d even look at you, expression flat, unmoving, perhaps trying to place your face in his mind, or just plain curious as to why there is another being in his domain. It’s odd being near him, like seeing a ghost at the end of the hallway, only for the spirit to flicker away at the last second once you turn to face it. But this time, the ghost doesn’t fade away.
The song of the walls is back in the sailboat room, you don’t try to leave, you don’t even want to leave when it’s comfortable here, where the sound of fabric couldn’t follow you. You don’t know why it hasn’t tried to enter the room, maybe it’s terrified, or maybe it lost track of you.
Your mind has gone foggy. You keep track of time with your phone, there’s no cell service inside so even if you could call someone, what would you even tell them? How would they even rescue you? Would someone even answer?
It’s been two days since you got stuck here. Two days of eating biscuits and rationing the water you packed. Your phone’s battery is still holding on to fifty percent, and you’d like to keep it that way as you shut it off when you have no need to check the time or want to look at old pictures to reminisce and remember that you’re still alive. There’s no day or night cycle here, and that confuses your circadian rhythm, there’s only the yellow walls and the ever permanent hum of the lights. But you don’t mind when your sleeping schedule has always been fucked.
You’ve searched every nook and cranny of the sailboat room. There’s an ever-present puddle of water all around it, never drying out. You could try to gather it in your water bottle but you’re sure that it’ll kill you faster than whatever was coming after you. The walls are still in the sickly yellow wallpaper, save for a corner where there’s a drawn on sun. It’s something you would see on a child’s drawing, crudely drawn with orange paint. You don’t know if it’s always been a part of the room or if someone once got stuck here too and drew the sun there to remember what it looked like, or to try what it felt like to be underneath its warmth.
There are three doors around you, one on your left just under the painted sun, another on your right, and one on the ceiling. You highly doubt you can reach the one high above, so your only options are the ones on the walls.
You’ve been gathering the courage to leave, to find the exit and go back home and never come back here. But once you look at the copy of your grandfather, you could just hear his humming in your head, his warm calloused hand patting your head, and you find yourself turning back into the boat and laying underneath the familiar wrong temperature covers and watching him through the window.
On day four, you hear something shift in the wall. You were pressing your ear against it, palm laying over it like always to find comfort, until you hear the creak within it. Like something shifted, something changed.
You figure it was just your imagination, your mind making up things again that you’re no stranger to. But you’re not in a place that has rules, a place that doesn’t make sense. Maybe the walls are actually shifting. Maybe something did change, or maybe something moved the walls.
On day five, you gather the courage to leave the room. But you made precautions, you packed a marker in your pack just for this exact reason, to mark the walls in case you got lost. It would’ve been great if you had done that before while the entity went after you.
You use the sailboat room as your north star, marking each corner of the walls you pass by with arrows pointing in its direction. You already know it’s safe there, so in case something goes wrong, you can find your way back to its hum.
You don’t take out your phone this time around to record the place, you want to conserve battery, even if it’ll help you in finding your way back by reviewing the footage.
You make it past three corridors away from the sailboat room before you catch a glimpse of a shape carrying a stool way ahead of you in between a crevice in the wall. You don’t call for it as you turn back to where you came from.
On day seven, your phone refuses to open. It should still be at forty percent. When you curse under your breath and tap at its sides, it flickers open, the screen glitching and humming the same tune as the walls. You only know it was actually day nine because you saw a glimpse of the date.
Your supplies are dwindling, you don’t bother with it when you don’t feel hungry anymore. You just press your head against the wall and listen to it sing and all your worries melt away.
On day twelve, you went out again. You made it as far as nine corridors away from the sailboat room, roughly a thousand steps. You find another room with a gaudy beach wallpaper and a door that won’t open no matter how hard you try. You leave it alone, and trudge on. Then you see blood on the wall and a dead seagull, you turn back.
You’ve mapped out the place on the walls of the sailboat room, each having their own distinctive marks on each room you’ve encountered. You must’ve walked a thousand miles by now as the map has grown larger than the wall itself.
You still listen to the humming when you feel too tired to explore, when you feel lonely, which has been a lot lately. The song within the wall and the reprieve it gives you is addicting, you need to be weaned off it if you want to get out of here.
You’ve lost count of the days.
Patrolling around the backrooms comes second nature to you now. It’s as if you’ve made it a place of your own. You walk with certainty, and you don’t bump into anything anymore. The shuffling of fabric hasn’t appeared since you fell into the sailboat room, nor do you want it to ever appear ever again.
You walk around the same path, trying to map out a deeper part of the backrooms, a part you’ve never been in. You tread carefully this time, a marker in hand and a hammer in the other.
Then you hear it— voices. Not the mechanical sound from the speakers that you’ve heard through the walls, and have seen playing on a couple of the same caveman standees, but real voices. People, there’s people here.
Hope blooms in your chest as you follow the voices as best as you could.
As you get closer, you hear three distinct voices. One woman and two men. They’re talking above each other, but you’re still too far away to understand what they’re saying.
Once you turn a corner, you see them. Two men, one woman just like how you heard them as.
One is tying a rope around the other, while the woman is apprehensive, rightfully so.
“Hello?” Your voice calls out to them and you barely recognize your own voice. They freeze in place, simultaneously turning to you with equally shocked faces. “Are you real?”
“Holy fuck, Clark, you got someone else in here?” The woman vaults from her seat, heaving, eyes wide as she glances between you and the older man.
“What, no! I don’t know who she is!” He defends, whilst the one with a rope around his hip points a camera at you curiously. “Who–who are you? How’d you get here?”
You wet your lips as you take a step forward. They all back up tentatively and you freeze on the spot. They look at your hammer as if you’re about to bash their heads in. So you clip it on your belt instead. “I’m real, I’m human.” You tell them your name, you haven’t heard of it in a while.
“Are you okay?” The man with the camera tests your name on his tongue, repeating it.
You haven’t been okay in a long time, the only time you were is when your head is pressed against the yellow wallpaper. “I—I don’t know.”
“I’m Bobby,” he points at himself as he looks at you through the camera’s lens. “She’s Kat, and he’s Clark.” Kat waves awkwardly at you as Clark just stares. “How did you get here?” He’s oddly warm to you.
The lenses hone in on your face as you hear it whirr. “I fell.” You simply say, tone wobbly as your fingers play at the frayed edges of the old comic shirt. “Can you help me get out of here, please?”
“Fuck, how long have you been here?” Kat is the first to walk closer to you as the blonde films the interaction with bated breath. The kind woman sidles beside you, hands to her sides as if she’s approaching a wounded animal.
“I don’t know, a while. I lost count on day twelve.” Your voice catches at the end and her hand grasps at your arm lightly. You almost cried at how warm and real she is.
“Please, you have to help me.”
“Twelve days? How come I’ve never seen you?” Clark asks, eyes glancing down at the slope then over to you as if he’s calculating something in his head.
“I–I avoid anything that moves.”
“There are things that move here?” Kat grasps at her hair, shaking profusely at the two men. “That’s it, Clark, we have to get out of here.”
“What the fuck.” Bobby hisses in between his teeth.
“No, no, we still need to see what’s down there.” Clark gestures at the slope. “Just this one thing, Kat. It’s perfectly safe! She’s been down here all alone and probably going insane.”
You’ve heard that last word one too many times.
“It’s not worth it.” She argues back, shaking her head.
“I kind of want to go down there.” Bobby declares as three heads turn towards him simultaneously. “I’m curious too.”
“I don’t think you should.” You’re on Kat’s side as she agrees with you, nodding along.
“Well, we’re not leaving here until we do.” Clark shrugs, hands landing on his pants with a thump. “You just have to wait, kid.”
You should argue back, say your piece with clenched teeth and furled fists, instead, you fumble your words, like always. You blink and Bobby’s already going down the slope.
This might not end well.
Instead of standing there like a tree, you go to help them with the rope. The quicker this is done, the faster you can go back home. Hands against the rough rope, almost identical to the one you came down on. Kat looks at you, giving you a tight-lipped smile as thanks. While Clark stares warily at you.
“Be careful, Bobby!” Kat’s voice shakes with trepidation.
“This isn’t as deep as I thought—” he almost slips, and you yank at the sliding rope, palms stinging from the friction.
“Bobby!”
“I’m good, I’m good!” His voice goes farther and farther away.
“Alright, what do you see?” Clark asks, yelling down below.
“Just a bunch of dirty laundry.” He replies back as the rope moves to the side.
“Laundry?” Your mouth turns dry. “What—what else?”
“It stinks in here.”
The rope moves further into the level below as you watch Kat’s anxiety clear on her face.
Your lips smack together as you feel your legs go numb under you. “I have a really bad feeling about this—”
“You’re not helping.” Clark mutters under his breath, not even sparing you a glance.
“Bobby?” Kat yells.
“Yeah?”
“Just checking if you’re okay!”
The rope is almost at its end as it slides onto your reddened clammy palms.
“We should go please. I don’t want to spend another—”
“Shit! Pull me up! Pull me up!” Bobby runs frantically up the slope on all fours, feet sliding down as he struggles.
The three of you frantically pull at the rope, until he finally makes it up with Clark helping him up by his arm. He then takes the camera away from Bobby and places it on the bed.
Bobby saw something. Just like you had.
“Something moved.” You don’t say it like a question, you state it as Bobby hyperventilates whilst Kat tries to calm him down.
“There’s fucking something— fuck!” His hands tries to remove the knot around his hip. “What kind of knot is this?”
You know what kind, it’s the kind that you use on ships when the wind is rough and tends to take the sails away so you use a knot that isn’t easy to untie. Why did Clark use that knot?
“Here, let me.” Pursing your lips, you sympathize with him as you try to untie the tough knot. Hissing in between your teeth, Bobby keeps moving, chest heaving and eyes blown. Whilst you avoid Kat’s frantic movements as she tries to make his breathing ease. “Do you guys have scissors—!”
The rope tugs him down, and he instinctively grabs onto something close to him— you.
“Oh shit, Kat!” His fingers dig into your arms bruisingly as you plant your feet on the ground, hands trembling whilst you desperately untie the rope. “Help me! Fuck!”
There’s fear in his blue eyes as he pleads with you, gripping onto you like a corpse in rigor mortis. “I’m trying!”
“Shit, Bobby!” Kat and Clark tries to pull him away from the slope, panic setting in their bones as you feel hands on you, tugging at you harshly.
There’s only the darkness below and a flickering light. Then you see it, a shift in the dark, a shadow waiting down below.
Adrenaline thrums in your veins as you see the rope lift from the slope, then all it took was one strong tug.
You and Bobby tumble down together, his grip still on you and around your ankle, his chin hits the slope in a sickening thud. Screams echo around the place. You don’t know if it was your scream, you just know that you have to act quick.
This isn’t an indifferent being like the copy of your grandfather, this was like the one that chased you, or probably the same one with the shifting fabric and quiet footsteps.
As you fall down, head hitting against the wall, you try your best to balance on the slope as you slide. You take the hammer from your belt and ready it the moment Bobby lands on the floor.
Before you could land, you jump from the slope, using the momentum to swing your hammer.
It doesn’t look like a man, or anything you’ve seen before in the backrooms. This being, this entity is seven foot tall, long limbs and a lopsided face that’s too long, too wobbly. And it looks like Clark.
You don’t ponder as you smack its large head with a hammer, cold blood splashing on your face, before you land harshly right on the foul heap of clothes. Your shoulder cries in pain as you yelp, eyes filling with stars for a moment.
The hit stuns it for a moment, the lights flicker wildly. It groans, its animalistic whimpering ring in your ears.
“Run!” Without thinking, head wobbly, you grab Bobby off the floor and make a run for it.
He cries in pain as you heave him to his feet, taking him over to the door that was placed wrong.
“Bobby!” Kat screams from upstairs, whilst you could see Clark trying to peek at the moving shadows.
One tug at the rope was all it took from his hip and it falls on the floor just as you push him through the door. You almost untied him upstairs, just one second more and you two would’ve been spared.
You’ll apologize to him later for the roughness, but as you stare at the creature that’s now holding onto the limp rope, you’ve never felt fear this intense, not when you were running from it before, not when you were all alone in the dark with a noose in your grip. This is different, there are other people that will get hurt. And you’re terrified for them.
It turns its head at you, a creaky slow movement as it taunts you before tugging at the rope harshly.
“Kat, run!” You warn, throat thrumming.
The sound of scraping furniture makes your teeth shake. Then the screams, two of them, two bodies sliding down. They’ll end up like you.
You don’t wait, you don’t stay as you watch it lumber over to you. Its peg leg thumping against the floor like a death knell.
With a heavy heart, you go through the door and slam it shut. You then take a chair beside you to block it.
It bangs on the door, almost breaking it. Then someone screams, it takes its attention away from you and Bobby.
“What are you doing? They’re still out there!” Bobby struggles to stand up, limping and using the wall to stand up. “Kat!”
“We’ll find them later!” You take his arm and throw it over your shoulder as you try to run as fast as you could with him in tow.
“Kat!” He screams too close in your ears as you try to navigate the winding yellow corridors. “Fuck! Kat!”
There’s more screaming just beyond the wall, you block it out, taking whoever you can still save.
“I know, Bobby! But you have to shut up or else it’ll come after us!” Heaving, he looks at you like you grew two heads. Whilst you try to find a landmark, anything, from the arrows you made to rooms you already passed through. It’s hard to navigate when you’re lugging around dead weight.
“We can’t just leave her—”
“I know! I fucking know!” Sweat dribbles off your brow as you pass by the dead seagull that’s now dried up and smelling like death. You know this place. “We’ll find her later, I promise. For now we have to run, okay? Bobby, tell me that you understand.”
Your eyes pleads with him, his blue eyes swims with thoughts, conflicted. He nods after a second as you pass by the beach room and you finally see the arrows you drew on the wall. You follow it, whilst Bobby picks up the pace, wincing through the pain.
“Where are we going?” His head is on a swivel, looking around to see if you’re being followed, and hoping to see either Kat or Clark. You can feel how afraid he is, from how his brows furrow, jaw tight and eyes turning glossy.
dededos
tangentwithtanner
romaincrisis
areudirty
andulkaphoto
