I'm not sure what time it is when I wake up, but it's dark outside. I'm not sure what happened after I fell asleep, but I'm not actively covered in any sexual fluids, so presumably, I was cleaned off in some manner. I find myself sandwiched in a big naked pile. Flint is behind me, Sophie and Scarlett in front of me. It's pleasant, comfy... and honestly a bit on the warm side to sleep.
That's not what woke me, though. I'm unbelievably thirsty. Trying to find the best way to not wake everyone, I shimmy downwards and crawl out through the bottom of the sheets and hop to the ground. Warm as I am, I decide to forgo clothes at the moment.
I trod down the stairs and walk to the kitchen, half expecting mystery granny to stick her head out at any moment, but all is calm. I fill up a tall glass of water and down it, twice. I suppose I did, um, release a lot of fluids earlier, so it makes sense I'd be so thirsty.
I take a moment to just look out the window into the dark, very much glad I'm in here and not out there. With a yawn and a stretch, I go back and ascend the stairs to rejoin my family in bed. When I come back to the bedroom, I find the door closed. Odd, since I don't remember closing it, but think little of it.
It's when I open it that the hairs on the back of my neck shoot straight up. I find myself staring down a long hallway, not dissimilar to the one I'm in. Eyes bugging, I look around to make sure I'm at the right room. Which is kind of stupid anyway, because none of the other doors lead to mysterious hallways. But no, I'm right where the master bedroom should be.
In an attempt at non-traditional problem solving, I close my eyes for a long moment and open them again, hoping everything would be back to normal. When that doesn't work, I shut the door. I turn around and lean against it as if my weight is going to keep whatever weirdness is going on from getting me. After a series of deep breaths, I turn around and open it again. Nope, still a hallway.
Feeling more panicked, I want to run and grab Flint and Scarlett, so they can protect me and explain what's happening. Humans always seem to understand things that shouldn't make sense. That's not an option right now, because the universe has turned them into a hallway.
After a few more attempts at closing the door, some more nervous pacing, and a fair amount of whining, I finally decide to investigate closer. I open the door and step into the new hallway. Two things are immediately disconcerting as I start to examine my surroundings. One, that it's weirdly cold in this hall, and two, it's really long. Too long. It looks like the rest of the house, but it extends too far to be part of the house. If you walk down it, you should be somewhere above the yard.
Deciding again that this is too weird, I back up but bump into the door. Which again, I didn't close, but closed it is, right behind me. And it won't open. The knob won't budge and the door won't move, no matter how hard I turn or pull. Not even in the normal way. It doesn't rattle or shake in response to my attempts. It's almost like it's not a door at all, as if it's just part of the wall, carved to look like a door.
I spend some further time panicking before I finally give up on getting through the door. I begrudgingly turn to face down the hall. I don't want to go down it, but I don't have anything else I can do. And it's cold in here. If I walk, at least maybe I'll warm up a little.
It's dark, but not so dark I can't see. Which is odd, because there are no windows. Or doors, now that I realize it. Just painted walls in the style of the rest of the house. There are light fixtures in the ceiling, but they don't appear to be on. Nor are there switches for them. The hallway doesn't go forever though, it reaches a turn somewhere out past where it should be in the house. I decide I'll go that far at least, and see what's around the corner.
When I get there, I'm greeted with another, even longer hallway. Even worse, the floor is now wet. Don't care for that. The carpet has this damp, squishy feeling. Which is entirely unnecessary towards making me feel intensely uncomfortable because I'm already there.
With no further options, knowing that the door is still basically not a door, I press on. It's cold, the floor feels like mud, and I'm still naked. And now the walls start to peel. As I go on, the top layer of the drywall that makes up the walls seems to be coming apart, with strips of it seeming to peel from up near the ceiling and dangling in my path. I push them away as I proceed, to keep them from striking me in the face. I said before that I was glad I'm not stuck out in the woods, but this is certainly replicating the feeling.
Just as the surreality of my situation starts to sink in, it takes the opportunity to get weirder. It was not enough that I'm cold, naked, and walking on a damp floor with bits of the walls hanging in my face. Now the floor becomes uneven, the ground ahead of me starts to slope up and down, twisting left and right, all in no discernable pattern. The walls and ceiling warp with it, twisting around to follow the rolling floor, looking still like the tattered walls of the house but bent in ways that would seem impossible for ordinary construction.
The walls become even more damaged as well. Paper and wood from the walls hang in my way more heavily, but also break off and litter the twisting ground in my path. The damage to the walls does not, however, show any sign of escape through them. The pieces coming free from them leave no openings to see or pass through.
The curving hall feels like it goes forever. I don't know how long I've wandered through here, my ability to gauge the time feels as abstracted as everything else. I'm freezing, my teeth are chattering, my fingers and toes are numb, my feet are wet, and there's all this garbage hitting me and getting in my way as I go. I don't want to admit it, but I'm on the verge of tears from confusion and fear.
I'm getting pushed past my ability to cope when another turn in the hall reveals what appears to be another door at the end of it, complete with light peeking out from the bottom. At this point, I don't care where it goes, as long as it's somewhere other than here. I start to sprint forward, nearly tripping over the debris on the floor, but that doesn't slow me.
No, what slows me is the roar. I think it's a roar. It sounds like the report of some animal, but it also sounds so unnatural. Like dragging a brick across a road, heard over the sound of a tea kettle starting to whistle. Somehow both low and high pitched at the same time. It's followed by a low rumbling of the same kind of sound. And it seems to be coming from right beside me.
Well not -right- beside me, there's a wall right beside me. Yet it felt close enough that I could feel the vibration of the sound in the chest cavity as if it's right on the other side of that wall.
I stop and take slow breaths until I'm reasonably sure it's gone, or at least not paying attention to me, and resume heading for the door, hopefully my exodus. I tiptoe as fast as I can without making excess noise until I'm finally there. I grab the knob and feel nearly euphoric when it actually turns.
I'm less euphoric when the doorway doesn't lead me back home. I pass into a dark, circular room, with only scant moonlight coming from a few windows. The ceiling is low, the floor earthen, and the whole place has a musty, damp smell. I severely don't want to be here, but I guess it's technically better than the hall. At least outside seems to exist again, the space I'm in no longer feels unnervingly impossible.
There's a large round object situated in the center of the room, which I have trouble making out in the dark. I assume it to be a table at first, but it has an odd shape, bulging at the sides. Upon approach, it seems strangely dark on top until I realize it has no top. It's a big, hollow bowl.
I don't know what it's for and I don't care, but it leaves me uncomfortable. I decide it's time to find a way out that doesn't lead back down the hallway, and start pacing around the walls in the dark, looking for another door.
Right when I think I've found one, the room floods with light. I'm used to human electrical lights coming on all at once. Doing it with candles is a new one. I couldn't see them in the dark, but they cover the room, in various stages of melt, and they all seem to ignite at once, sans any sort of means for that to actually happen.
"You aren't Flint," a woman's voice announces from across the room.
She sounds quite cross at this fact. Hard for me to disagree, I wish Flint was here too. She sounds oddly familiar, too.
I spin around to see an attractive middle-aged woman with dark hair sitting on the opposite side of that bowl in the center. Which I can now quite clearly see is less 'bowl' and more 'cauldron'. She looks familiar too, but I'm not quite placing it. My hands quickly fly to cover my crotch as I feel a newfound awareness of my nakedness.
"I agree, I am not Flint," I agree.
I think I preferred this place in the dark. The walls and ceiling are covered with hanging objects ranging from creepy to gross. Arrangements of small bones, tied bundles of rotting... something, bird's feet, something I hope is not a hand, among others.
"The question is -why- are you not Flint?" she demands of me.
