My heart pounded wildly against my chest, I was sure I had seen the door knob turn.
I looked closely, and suddenly, the door swung wide open for all to see and beyond it was...... emptiness, there was nothing but darkness through the door, thick, consuming darkness.
I backed away, stunned and turned away to run through the door, but the darkness was pulling me in, like a gigantic vacuum that ate everything around it, I screamed in terror and doubled my efforts to flee from it but the vacuum just got stronger and stronger until, inevitably I succumbed to the sense of drowning despair that had engulfed me and fell into the void.
I opened my eyes and found myself to be in a stairway of some kind, it was so dark that he could only see a metre in front of me, then without warning, a voice, full of pain and cruelty and hardened like a diamond spoke to me, "Hello traveler, the stairway before you contains more horrors than your tiny head could imagine, however, if you don't continue, the price will ultimately be even more painful than anything you can think up of. If it is that you reach the end though, I can and will make you a god, so, take your choice weary traveller, continue and watch as your sanity crumbles before you or feel the pain of your life being slowly taken away from you. Choose."
I stood there for what felt like an age, my choice already in my head but not in my body, but I had to get back to my family, my friends so I sucked it up and started walking down the stairway in the darkness, slowly and carefully, then as he reached the first floor the voice boomed out again and said "You face your first challenge, how will you react?" With that I took a last step on the stairway and watched, shocked, as the entire place turned and distorted into my living room, there stood my family being mutilated before my eyes.
I ran forward to help them but was thrown back by an invisible wall, I pounded on it, screaming my head off all until the murderer was finished and my family lay unmoving in front of me with cold unseeing eyes staring at me. I huddled down against the wall shivering, and watched as the image faded into nothingness and another set of stairs appeared in front of me. I sat there, staring into the abyss. I managed to gather myself up and continued to walk down the stairs onto another floor.
I closed my eyes and braced myself for what lay ahead and then opened them slowly, dreading what was ahead, but there was nothing ahead, no horror lay before me, no terrifying image of destruction was waiting ahead. I stood there, puzzled and then the room suddenly shifted and turned into a room that was padded, there was a strange liquid on one of the walls. I looked closely and recoiled, it was just what I had expected, blood. Now that I had seen it I realized that the entire room was covered in it. The room was small and cramped, with the foul, rotting odour that came with death. I then noticed that a small bundle of something dark was in the corner.
Just as I saw that it started to sing in a strange, disturbing and twinkling voice:"twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder where you are, like a chess piece on a board, I will eat your soul for joy, twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder where you are." Hearing this I backed away slowly and deliberately until my foot bumped into something, I looked down just as it squeaked from the impact, quick as a whisper, the girl turned around revealing a babyish face that had been mutilated, the eyes leaked blood and the teeth were sharpened and bloodied, without thinking, I turned around and ran.
I reached a wall and turned around, the thing had stopped, seeing that I was trapped, she was still carrying a teddy bear around. As it walked towards me, it contorted it's face into something resembling a smile, not a smile that friends give each other, but a smile that a predator gave when it's prey was trapped with nowhere to go. Seeing this, I sat down and curled into a ball and awaited, even welcomed my passing.
Images flashed through my mind as the thing came steadily closer, my childhood that I took for granted, my first crush, the first time being bullied and then, my wedding day. My mind seemed to be struggling to tell me not to give up. With a great effort I pulled myself up, catching the thing off guard, it had not expected a fight from me and the thought of the possible thousands of people massacred by this thing made my blood boil, taking advantage of it's surprise I lunged at it and surprising myself and it I caught it, using my bare fists I pummelled it, not giving it a chance to retaliate in attack, when I was satisfied that it was unconscious the voice boomed out again, "very interesting, that was the test that most lost themselves on, some have conquered it however and moved on only to perish in the next, continue." And so I did, walking into the black abyss into the next horror that awaited me.
I reached the end of the staircase once again and stopped to regain my senses, I had long lost track of what time it was. I opened them slowly and saw that I was in a plain dark room, from what I saw, there was nothing too special about it, then, with a grind of what sounded like some gears the walls started to move in, making the already constricted room even smaller, I then suddenly became aware of it's purpose, to squash me with the increasingly smaller room, I watched in horror as the left and right walls continued to move closer, my breathing became more constricted as I started to panic, the walls were getting closer and I started clawing at the walls, trying to find a way to escape, I couldn't find anything, I just stared a the walls continuing to come closer and closer until I was squeezed between them and with the last squeeze there was a sickening crunch that came with it and everything went black.
I opened my eyes and found myself in a dark room with a single door on the far side, it swung open and he saw a figure, not evil or corrupting like the other figures and actually quite beautiful, he guessed that it was what death looked like, not ghastly or foreboding like people suggest, but beautiful and welcoming should you understand that everyone must die eventually. She beckoned me to follow her and I did, with a sense of curiosity.
After following her for a while she stopped and opened another door, the sight that welcomed me was something to behold and was beautiful, however, I won't spoil the surprise for you, you'll just have to find out yourself, just accept the fact that you don't have to die, but eventually, everyone will.
Fin
