I wrote this for a project at school
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Everything went dark. One of her brows creasing in worry, Adelyn Knowles lifted her VR headset off of her short, curly, dark brown hair and slid her lower body to the ground off the plush mattress in her room. The machine's whirring sounds came to a halt, and the usual sounds of the house came to an eerie line of quiet, the only noise being her breathing, something Adelyn had never heard or thought possible before. She took four small steps cautiously. The lack of sound made the steps feel bigger, moreso like an elephant's stomp rather than what should have been a quiet little shuffle. As soon as her dark pupils dilated and adjusted, they darted around searching for an answer. When her mind finally agreed with her body, she dashed out the door and went to get help from one of her neighbors. She thought it over and skimmed through her memories, registering that it was unheard of for a house's AI to just stop working and shut down.
Adelyn didn't know what to do when she got to the front door. Usually, she could just reach out her hand and use that as a pass to get through it, or, better yet, could ask her parents for help, but the sensors weren't working and her parents were on a vacation, so the best she could do was stare at the rectangular piece of wood and observe her surroundings. The lights were off and a smokey smell wafted around the house. Everything was painted in dark blues and blacks. There were slight slivers of golden light projected under the window curtains, casting light on the floor. She was in a hallway with mint-colored wallpaper and birch flooring. The enclosed space was very smooth with no imperfections and had black lines framing them, making it seem unnatural and like she was in one of those old cartoons. She realized that she does not remember this hallway being there. A quiet zap made her flinch slightly. Smoke curled up from the basement door in flowing wisps toward the ceiling. Adelyn panicked once she saw the smoke and quickly acted on her first thought. She slid open the window unsteadily, having trouble getting it open. She then lifted the window wide enough to crawl through. When she was sure the window frame was secure and would not fall back down, she jumped like a wet rabbit and stumbled onto the cracked pavement outside.
Adelyn looked around and found that everything was blurry. She frowned and cast a suspicious glance at her surroundings. Deciding to look around and observe her environment again, she shifted her gaze down and saw grass, old and yellow, in the cracks of the concrete. The little wilted strands looked deprived of life and had the crunch of a dried leaf when stepped on. She looked closer, trying to focus, and was disoriented to find the details below her feet changing their form to different versions of the same thing every three seconds. Adelyn blinked in confusion and turned away figuring she might be going crazy. She walked over the bleached, gravelly, light gray pavement, wait no the pavement was a royal blue, no, actually it was a reddish black- and up the twisting path to the pleasant gray door of her neighbor's house. The gate towered above her and was surrounded by intricate carvings. Strangely, door handles of various designs, all of them some type of metal, were covering the surface and leaving her with only one spot to knock. The Neighbor had always been strange. She tapped the only bare part of the entrance with one of her knuckles, and the vibrations rang through the air like a pencil dropping in a quiet classroom.
A pale robotic-like hand with thin fingers immediately snaked around the hatch, giving Adelyn the feeling (or- illusion- she guesses) that her neighbor had been waiting the whole time for something to happen or one to come upon the strange doorway. The gateway screeched open. She felt shivers down her spine. She had never wished more that this week was not vacation week, where everyone was away and not present to watch or to monitor here. To her knowledge, the Neighbor had never told anyone their name when they moved in, and everyone had simply resorted to just calling them Neighbor. Adelyn now desired to have something other than that name to call the strange being when Neighbor spoke:
"Do you need something, dearie?" they said in an almost computerized voice.
Neighbor's eyes were a clear emerald green, which would have been beautiful if they didn't look soulless and automated, staring right through her and feeling like they were reading her very existence. Adelyn tried to keep herself from stuttering.
"Yeah, uhm, my house's electronics stopped working and I was hoping that you could contact someone to help me fix it."
She barely registered that she succeeded when Neighbor said the next duplicated mechanical words.
"Do you need something, dearie?" they said again in the exact same pitch and tone as before, even with the same voice cracks.
Adelyn turned around and walked away. She knew that she should probably try to get Neighbor to help, but she did not want to deal with this. She heard a door creak close from behind her. Is anyone else home for vacation week? Maybe? Hopefully. The only reason Adelyn was still at home was she tried to spite her parents. Of course, in typical parent fashion, they left without her, only taking her brother, and that plan kinda backfired. Something lifted off her head and she hopped on a subway. When did she get here? Her temples rang with a growing migraine. Adelyn felt bleary and everything was cloudy. A blob stumbled closer, and she could make out red in a place where the head would be if it was a human. The strange globule's maroon head thing was moving up and down, so she figured it was saying something. She was probably wearing her headset, no way this was real, right? She could hear them now, and the blob was making undecipherable words. The blotch was pure void and appeared to be eating the edges of things around it. Intelligible words were pouring about in the air. She realized that the entirety of the babbling coming out from its mouth sounded robotic. It steadily moved to within reach, and she felt something sharp and cold like a knife poking her arm. She felt her anxiety kick in and she shakily sat up. She figured that maybe the blob was culpable. When she was panicked, Adelyn had a problem of not thinking things through before doing stuff. This totally didn't come back to bite her in the behind, totally. This "definitely" didn't make a negative impact when she got up and used the metal thing that was poking her arm to STAB the thing. Something pricked Adelyn in the neck, and everything faded into inky black.
Sid Knowles watched his sister drive away in a padded white vehicle. His parents said she would come back in a few months, but he felt really stressed out. Sid had seen this same situation play out many times before on the news and being mentioned offhandedly online. He knew where she was going, even though his parents didn't tell him. He hoped that she would get better and be back to reality soon.
"Sid! Can you come downstairs?" his mom yelled.
"In a minute!"
He sighed and wobbled to his feet, grimacing as a sharp pain pierced his side. Slowly regaining his footing, Sid swiped a red baseball cap off his nightstand.
