Liminal 3: Shattered Dimensions

Bring Me A Dream

As Adaliya and Sarah pushed through the heavy door, the air around them changed. They stepped into a vast, dimly lit space. The ceiling was high, disappearing into darkness above them, and rows of empty storefronts stretched out in either direction. They were standing in what looked like an abandoned shopping mall.

Flickering fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting long, eerie shadows across the cracked tile floors. The space felt suffocating, despite its size, as if it had been forgotten by time, left to decay. Adaliya's breathing slowed, the tension in her body growing with each step.

The sound of distant music broke the silence.

"Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream..."

The melody, faint at first, began playing over the mall's speakers. But the song wasn't right. It was warped, distorted, as though the track had been playing on a broken record player for years. The once cheerful tune now sounded hollow and chilling, echoing through the empty hallways.

Sarah froze, looking around. "What... what is this place?" she whispered, her voice barely audible.

Adaliya didn't answer. Something about this place gnawed at her. A sense of unease that she couldn't shake. Her eyes scanned the storefronts—empty mannequins stood frozen in dusty windows, their faces blank, twisted. It felt like they were watching them.

And then she heard it.

A voice. Not just any voice—*familiar* voices.

"Adaliya?" It was faint, but unmistakable.

She stopped dead in her tracks. Sarah noticed her sudden pause, her eyes wide with fear. "What is it? What's wrong?"

Adaliya didn't respond immediately. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she strained to listen. The voices were distant, almost like they were carried on the breeze, but they were unmistakable. She heard her name again, and then more voices, overlapping, coming from different directions, but all ones she knew.

One of them was *Ben's* voice.

Her breath hitched. Ben had been dead, his body left in the Backrooms, decomposed far quicker than it should have. She'd seen it. He couldn't be alive. He couldn't be calling her name.

"Adaliya... where are you?"

"No," she whispered, shaking her head. "No, it's not real."

Sarah stepped closer, grabbing her arm. "What? What's not real?"

But Adaliya was already walking, her pace quickening as she moved toward the source of the voices. She had to see, to *know*. Maybe, just maybe, they had been wrong. Maybe Ben had somehow survived, maybe the others—

As they neared a darkened corridor leading deeper into the mall, the voices became clearer, but more disjointed, like they were being played through broken speakers. It wasn't just Ben's voice anymore. She heard other voices too—voices from her past, people she had known before all of this.

"Adaliya, come find us..."

It was her mother's voice now. A voice she hadn't heard in years. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

"Adaliya..." The voice was gentle, almost comforting. But in this place, nothing was comforting.

She came to a stop at the mouth of the corridor, staring into the dark, the distorted song still playing in the background.

Sarah tugged at her sleeve, her voice trembling. "Adaliya, we need to go. This is... this isn't right."

But Adaliya couldn't tear her eyes away from the darkness ahead. "I have to know," she whispered. "I have to know if it's real."