Five Nights At Howell's

I Began To Understand Why God Died

~Prepare for the most emotional chapter I've ever written.~
                    Who_I_Want_To_Be_ are you prepared?
              I will explain the words with an * at the end.

"Are you in the bedroom, Phil?"
"You know I am."
"Yes... Well, good luck."

The mystery man left and the door behind Phil slammed shut. He tried to unlock it but the knob wouldn't budge. He pounded on the door, trying to knock it down but it had no effect. He was locked in Dan's old bedroom without any exit.

The light above him flickered on and off, giving off little light along with the window. The room looked very ominous, the vibe was eerie and blank. Panic (!) filled Phil's brain and he had to slide down the wall and onto the floor so he wouldn't fall over.

He was alone, without a way out.
Dan was alone, without a way out.
No one could save either of them.

Breathe
In
Out

In
Don't forget to breathe!
Out.

You have to breathe and stay alive. You have to get Jason. You have to get back to Dan.
Dan...

"Fudge. He's alone. Hey! GUY! Are you there?"
No one answered him, causing him to panic even more. He had promised Dan he would not leave him again. Phil paced around the room until he got dizzy. The room spun around him until finally it stopped and it all turned black.

***

His eyes fluttered, his lips quivered. He saw his reflection in front of him. He was in front of a reflection; an alternate time or reality. He heard his own voice call out, screaming for someone, anyone to save him. There was someone there, though. Standing in front of Phil, the man was watching him. He was saying something but the reflected Phil didn't want to hear it.

The man was yelling at him, pointing his finger and walking closer and closer to him. Phil Two was quaking in the corner of the little room. His eyes were now closed and hands covering his ears. The man stood there for a moment and walked out. When he came back he was dragging a person behind him. The man threw the person in front of Phil Two, and when the duplicate looked up he screamed.

It was Dan, bloodied and bruised, just like when Phil saw him in the basement. Phil Two fell to his knees and crawled over to the deflated boy. Dan was so skinny you could see his rib cage and his arms were so thin, they would snap if you gripped them hard enough. His face was deeper than it was before and his cheeks were caved in. The pale blue lips gave away his death; drowning.
It was the irony of him drowning when he should have burned that tore Phil from the mirror.

Both Phil Two and the Real Phil cried. This illusion wasn't nice in the slightest bit. It tapped into his fear of losing Dan once and for all, and not having a way to fix it. The wall separating the two of them fell and Phil Two rushed behind the Real Phil and pushed him into the room, right before the wall fell back in place.

Now Phil was really trapped, trapped with the love of his life on the floor. He knew he shouldn't look down, that the Dan there wasn't the real one. He also knew that he couldn't get out.

Phil leaned up against the wall and balled himself on the floor, willing it to all go away.

And lucky him it did...

In a second, he was swinging from a cage in a white room. There were no windows or paintings, the room was awfully plain and empty. Just the cages hanging from the ceiling by rotten chains. Each cage swung noisily, a calm but disturbing creek from each one. They swung a rusted chain roped from the ceiling.