Warped

Chapter 3

I woke up to a deep, uneven rumbling that sent tremors through the ceiling of the basement, to the teeny walls of the teeny cupboard, to my spine, my toes, and in the nose on my face that was painfully smushed against wood. Stupid radiator. It had a tendency to rattle nonstop.

It felt like I hadn't opened my eyes in years. There was a thick crust jammed in there that broke agonizingly slowly as I peeled them open and poked my eyeball, making it all watery and gross. I couldn't even maneuver my hand around to rub them. They were hella itchy.

"Ow," I said dully. Everything hurt. My arms ached like they hadn't been used in centuries. My legs were jumbled together and I couldn't tell which was which. One was sore and the other had lost feeling. My whole face was numb.

The radiator hummed louder. Even my blood cells were vibrating. "Mrrrrrphhh...," I grumbled against the thin wall. There was no way I was gonna move. Ha. Like I even could.

I'd just accepted my fate and was starting to close my eyes when a jolt shook the whole box--me included. My hand--I don't even know which one--somehow managed to jam its way to my face through the tangle of limbs, a knuckle going up my nose, and my forehead gathered multiple splinters from the wall.

"Euuuuuurrrrrghhhh." I wanted out.

Using the hand that wasn't up my nose, I slapped all around the tiny cupboard. My fingertips smacked a split in the wood, and I followed the line with my fingertips, trying to locate the rusted latch while reaching through my ever-growing mess of legs. Dimly, in my half-asleep mind, I wondered why there was a latch on the inside of the cupboard to begin with. Who the Hell would be stupid enough to get inside this thing, warranting a latch to get out?

Oh yeah. Me.

My hand finally closed around the latch, my arm about to snap--it was so not supposed to bend that way--but I had my way out. I flicked up the latch...but hesitated mid-swipe. My hands paused, because...no. Not the latch. A latch. This one felt different, sent a different feeling through me, almost like a foreboding. It was different before. This was wrong.

Then I rolled my eyes. It was ridiculous. How would I know the differences between two latches?

All preceding thoughts forgotten, my obnoxiously uneven nails flipped the metal, and the weight from my back pressing against the door made me topple out of the cupboard and onto the floor in an aching, groaning heap.

I stayed there for probably like fifteen minutes. The carpet was unreasonably comfortable; I guessed some kind of tacky thick stuff. Definitely not my basement carpet, even though that was pretty high on the tacky scale. Well. At least I wasn't in that claustrophobia factory.

I finally opened my still-crusted eyes. After a few moments of not being able to see anything, I gathered the energy to rub my eyes. They took in light for the first time in hours, and I blinked them over and over to adjust. The entire room was covered in gross fuchsia. The color covered everything. Drapings, a desk, the carpet. There were also velvet light-blocking curtains in the shade against windows with similarly-colored frames. When I walked closer to the window, though, I realized it wasn't a window. It was a mirror. There was a scrawny, raven-haired seventeen-year-old tanned amber staring back at me. A huge chandelier hung above me, adorned with--you guessed it--fuchsia candles. in the center of the room was a door. It was the one thing that wasn't fuchsia.

"Screw it," I said aloud, and turned the handle. All the bright colors were giving me a headache, and I was already hopelessly confused as to where I was. How could things possibly get worse?

The door gave way into a seemingly endless hallway with white floors and white walls. It was brightly lit, though I couldn't find a source. Maybe all the white made it seem extra bright. I took a step, and inhaled a stream of icy air as my bare foot touched the floor. It felt like walking on water--unmoving, white water that appeared to be made of wall instead of floor.

I reached my hand out to touch a side of the hall. My fingers plunged into the purest, smoothest liquid I'd ever touched. It couldn't have been water. When I withdrew my hand, it was dry. Unchanged. I swallowed hard and moved my gaze forward. Doors, lining both sides of the hall as far as I could see. Each of them had a different design in the woodwork, or whatever they happened to be made of--some of the ones closest to me looked to be made crudely from dried rushes.

Which one? I wondered, and grinned. Leave it to me to do something without thinking. As long as it took me away from my family for at least a little while, I was down. So I took a few steps forward--those rushes didn't look all that trustworthy--and stopped in front of one of the first wooden doors. It had intricate yet simple designs. It made me think of a seven year old trying to replicate Michelangelo, or the tracing of a beautiful painting.

Mid-shrug, I turned the knob and pulled.