Chasing Butterflies (Anomaly Saga #3)

[1]

I woke up in a white room⁠-completely empty except for a single locked door and a golden scepter on the floor in front of me.

I approached the scepter and stared at it for what felt like an hour before finally deciding to pick it up. I examined it just as it began to shake, and it shot a golden flame at the door. When the flame hit, a loud buzzing noise sounded overhead and the locked door was gone.

I carefully approached the area where the door once was and looked through it. Ahead of me was a room similar to the one I was currently in, but the walls were painted to look like trees. Several real looking small huts and fake plastic snakes were spread around the room. I had nowhere else to go but forward. A loud rumbling sound came from behind me, and I turned to find that the doorway I had entered through was gone. Finally, I noticed that this room had two locked doors.

Hoping it would be as easy this time as it was the last, I began my search of the area. I noticed a few of the painted trees had letters carved into them. The tall birch in the corner displayed the initials "M.S.", along with an X. A rowan tree that was where the old door used to be bore "R.S." and a checkmark.

I continued to search the room, exploring each of the huts. They were simple in structure, each holding a single small room. The smallest hut, which I could barely fit into, contained a single, unlabeled book. I managed to pull it out and discovered it was about snakes. It described the different species and how to identify them. I compared the identifications to the plastic snakes scattered across the ground and quickly figured out each snake was modeled after an actual species. That's when I realized - milk snake (or "M.S.") and rattlesnake (or "R.S."). Using the book, I located both snakes and brought them to the doors.

The modeled snakes, after I set the both of them in front of their respective doors, began to suddenly writhe and shake on the floor. I stifled a gasp as they slid up the sides of the doors, but the milk snake stopped abruptly.

The rattlesnake slid around the doorknob of its door, and its hinges creaked as it swung open to reveal a room with an exterior painted like a desert as far as I could see.

The milk snake, however, was frozen on the side of the other door.

I gasped. What had I done wrong? I hoped this snake wasn't dead. I flipped back to the milk snake page in the book, but for some reason, it was gone. I went through the book again and again for what felt like hours until I came to the conclusion that the page really wasn't there. Had I gone insane?

I closed the book. Either way, what was done was done. I had to move on.

I tried to walk through the open rattlesnake door, but I couldn't. Some invisible force was keeping me out.

I dropped the book, and this time I wasn't stopped. The door closed and locked behind me.