The Causeway of Time

The Hallway

Leo looked around at the place she found herself in. Everything was an empty, blank white. Walls, ceiling, floor, everything. The first thought she had was, 'Wow, whoever designed this place had an appreciation of the achromatic.'

The other one was 'Hey, what the fuck?'

The last thing she remembered was a frantic voice over the intercom, telling them on repeat to brace. Then, just like that, she was sitting with her back up against one of the walls of the hallway with her messenger bag in her lap and zero clues as to how she got there. Leo rubbed her temples and started to rummage through the bag. Her notebooks for school sat in the main compartment, but she couldn't find her phone or her laptop.

"Well, shit," she groaned, letting out a sigh as she slung her bag over her shoulder. She looked to her left, then to her right, and upon seeing no difference between the two sides of the hallway, she chose left and began to walk.

She walked.

And she walked.

And she walked even more.

It seemed as if this corridor just led on forever, and the thought of walking for eternity sent chills down Leo's spine. However, just as she was certain that there was some sort of weird loop in space sending her in circles, she came across something in the wall to her right.

It was a large circular opening in the wall that showed a bird's eye view of a series of zigzagging runways. A jet stood on the runway, the engine on the right wing billowing smoke into the sky. Leo tilted her head, squinting her eyes as she scanned the scene.

"Huh, it looks like the Portland Jetport," she mused. "Actually, I think it is the Portland Jetport. I was actually flying..." She trailed off, understanding of the situation dawning on her. Leo took a step towards the opening, but before she could get within a foot of it, she froze. She couldn't go through it. It wasn't as if there was some sort of barrier between her and it, instead it just felt... wrong. Overwhelmingly wrong, enough so that she couldn't find the strength to walk through the opening. Leo backed up, gritting her teeth before trying again.

After getting the same results every single time she tried, she finally gave up. Giving the gate a withering look, she turned and continued to walk down the hall.

"Alright, assuming I'm not dreaming, or hell, assuming I'm not dead, I'm currently trapped by myself in wherever," she gestured wildly around herself, "THIS is. And, not only that, my plane landed perfectly fine, EXCEPT for the fact that it landed without me. Fantastic!" Leo let out a huff, her pace quickening a bit.

After what seemed like hours of walking, she finally had to stop. It wasn't due to fatigue or anything. It was more to do with the hallway turning pitch black ten feet in front of her. Nothing could be seen in the darkness, and Leo instinctively took a few steps back. Leo hadn't really given much thought as to how the place was lit, but now she was starting to really think about it; mostly, she questioned what could have possibly happened to create the hellish stretch of evil that lay before her.

Before she could turn around and nope out of the situation, Leo caught a glimpse of something rectangular sitting on the ground. She knelt down, brushing off a thick layer of dirt to reveal a laptop. It was a smaller computer, relatively light with a black exterior. Leo picked it up and placed it in her bag, before turning around. With one last glance at the yawning darkness, she began her journey back, trying to ignore the nervous feeling of eyes staring at her as she walked in the opposite direction.