Come Closer

If you have to eliminate all emotion to live, are you really living?

You wake up without any memories. Without a trace of your past life. You wake up alongside ninety-nine other teenagers, all scared, all confused.

You're trapped in a building that never seems to end.

Where are you? Who are you?

What are you?

A message informs you and the others of your challenge: Survive.

Every teen has a terrible fear lurking deep inside them.

Every room, every hall, every floor of this compound is crawling with them. Heights. Spiders. Darkness. And then the more specific fears. The deeper fears.

The deadliest fears.

In this psychological thriller, you are the protagonist. You watch helplessly as you are forced to choose between survival and your moral code, life and death, to be a piece in someone's game or a rebel left with the consequences. Every choice you make defines you. Every breath you steal punishes you.

Only one can win. That's what they say. Only one can escape the compound and be welcomed into the outside world.

But is making it out really winning?

(A novella in second-person.)