Mom accidentally no-clipped into the Backrooms when I was 13. I called to her from downstairs to request help with my math homework, but when I met her at the stairs, her left foot had slipped and she tumbled down each step. Bracing myself for the painful thud and moans of pain that her fall should produce, you can imagine I was quite shocked to find that her body had phased completely through the floor.
I immediately called the police and attempted to explain the strange situation to the best of my ability, but they didn’t seem to take it seriously. Of course they assumed it was just a strange teenager prank calling them.
However, I thought I heard a knock on my door within the immediate time after Mom’s vanishing, in which I foolishly searched the basement to see if she somehow would be there, right below the floor at the base of the staircase. I hadn’t fully processed the knock when I heard a crash and heavy footsteps swarming the upper layer of my house.
Like any young teen would do, I hid to the best of my ability, which unfortunately happened to be in my basement closet. Despite my best efforts, I guess my muffled whimpering was still loud enough for the strange intruders to hear me, as the closet door had been yanked open after what was likely only a few minutes.
Standing before me was a slim man in a pristine black and white business suit with a faded fedora shielding his eyes.
“Hey kid, your mommy is gone. I’m sorry,” he responded in a sympathetic whisper upon recognizing my fear and confusion.
He ordered me to follow him, which my grieving mind allowed my body to do without resistance, and I sat down in the passenger seat of an unmarked car. Next to me sat another man, who gave me a subtle nod to acknowledge my presence.
“Aw man, a kid saw it this time?” mumbled the man in the passenger seat, who shared identical attire to the man who had discovered me.
“Unfortunately, yes,” replied the other man as he turned the ignition for his car.
The drive felt like a fever dream, but I recall brief pieces of the events following the drive, such as the slim man in the passenger seat nudging me out of the vehicle and ushering me into an unfamiliar building. He showed the secretary at the front desk what appeared to be some form of identification before I met my caretaker, Ms. Gertrude, who brought me into a bare room with four beds.
In the following weeks, I had a three hour counseling session with a team of medical professionals on a daily basis. Ms. Gertrude, who I considered to be a parental figure, would lead me to these appointments, which were located in isolated rooms on the opposite end of the orphanage, where no other children were located. In these meetings, the professionals explained to me that my Mom died when I was six years old, and that I lived my entire life in an orphanage. Furthermore, they claimed that any memories I had of my “Mom” beyond the weeks following my sixth birthday was simply a mental image of what I hoped my family was like. Therefore, at the conclusion of each session, I was provided medication to reverse the effects of what they referred to as “delusions.”
I grew up in an orphanage, in which I believed for most of my life that I was both insane and had amnesia between the ages of 6 and 13. I was constantly fearful that a relapse would occur, so I kept a secret diary of significant events that occurred at the end of every week.
As time passed, boys my age would enter and leave my shared bedroom when they lost parents or were adopted. I was never adopted, and neither was another boy in my bedroom named Jack. Perhaps we were destined to be friends.
Jack and I had a few interesting similarities. We both believed that we had become orphans when our moms died shortly after our sixth birthdays. Both of us had periods of what the doctors claimed were “rogue spells,” in which our minds would wander and create idealistic scenarios in which we lived a joyful life. Our lifestyles were quite different though, as Jack embraced athleticism and fitness to improve his drained mental health, while I turned to research and learning. Despite this, we both stayed good friends during our time in the orphanage.
When I turned 18, I became a freelance plumber while Jack had been accepted into a university with an athletics scholarship for football. For the past two years apart, we had little more contact than occasional messages through social media. That all changed four days ago when Jack sent me an urgent text message saying “We need to talk. Come over to my apartment now. I promise, this is life changing.”
I originally intended to tell a joke in response, as he couldn’t possibly expect me to drive two hours to his apartment at 11 at night. I had a high-paying client that needed to be attended to the next day, and I could not risk missing out on such money. Before I could respond to his unreasonable demand, I looked at my phone to find that he sent another text:
“It’s about our parents.”
I wasted no more time and arrived at Jack’s apartment a little after 1 in the morning. I climbed the stairs to reach his apartment on the 3rd floor, and I knocked on his door. Only a few seconds passed before Jack swung the door open and ushered me inside.
Dressed in sweatpants and wearing a tight tank top which emphasized his muscular build, he directed me to his dining room table, in which he had a laptop sitting on the table.
“Hey,” he muttered bluntly. “I think we’ve been lied to, man.”
“Lied to?” I asked inquisitively. “What do you mean? We were both raised by single mothers who passed away when we were six years old.”
“How?” replied Jack. “How did she die? Did they ever tell you? They never told me how my mom died.”
“Well,” I pondered. “I’m not sure. I guess they just didn’t want to upset me, so they never did.”
“Your mother didn’t die when you were six! I can prove it!” he exclaimed, slamming his fist on the table before turning the screen of his laptop around to reveal a message board of sorts titled Backrooms to Earth.
I squinted at the screen to find a post from the profile FindMyMatt, which included the following:
Oh Matt, I’m so sorry that I haven’t been able to contact you. I’m stuck in a strange land that I’ve come to learn is known as the Backrooms. I’ve managed to seek refuge with the M.E.G community at Base Alpha, but soon I will be venturing further. Please do not seek to find me. I will find you. Do not worry about me Matt, and stay far away from the stairs,
I love you so much,
Mom
I was in disbelief, not knowing whether Mom had really written such a message. My jaw hung open before Jack impatiently cut me off.
“Did she no-clip?”
“What do you mean, Jack?” I responded puzzled.
“Did she phase through something and disappear? Did she, Matt? I know this memory has been repressed by pills and propaganda, but think Matt! Think!”
By now, he had clamped a hand on both of my shoulders and was shaking my short, scrawny body like a ragdoll. As his coffee breath invaded my nostrils with a pungent odor, something in my mind just clicked. Marissa, Mom, had fallen through the floor of my staircase when I was 13.
“Jack, she fell through the floor on her tumble down the staircase. I… I don’t know what happened to her.”
Jack fell quiet as his arms went limp. “My mom and I were going for a hike in the forest when one of her feet suddenly pressed through the floor. Not like a shoe sinking in mud or quicksand, but more like a shoe attempting to stand on a hologram. She completely lost balance and fell through. I remember my mom, Matt.” His recollection of such events appeared to puncture his soul as his eyes began to tear up.
“I was doing research, and I think my mom and your mom have fallen into the Backrooms, man.”
Contrary to how one might expect a person to respond in such a situation, the cogs in my mind began to grind together, producing a crude, yet straightforward plan.
“We need to go to the Backrooms,” I stated.
Jack’s eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. “We can’t go! We’ll never get back, and we don’t even know if our moms are alive. Hell, the post by your Mom was 2 months ago! How do we know where she is now?”
My eyes laid daggers at the picture of an endless maze of yellow paper illuminated by the monotony of fluorescent lights, which acted as a crude logo for the forum.
“I never knew what my purpose was in this world. At this moment, everything has been taken from me. My childhood began with only a single mom, who sacrificed everything to give me the life she believed I deserved. Then my Mom was taken from me. My family was decimated by the demons of chance, and so has my life. I don’t have any friends aside from you, I work an unsatisfying career, and though I make decent money, I’m not happy. I will never be happy. Do you know what would make me happy? Seeing my mom. I have nothing to lose, so why not take the gamble to see my mom again. My mom is my world, and I will find her.”
Jack stood stiff for a second before tears flushed down his cheeks.
“Mom was my world too. I miss her so much. I know I need to find her,” he whimpered.
From this conversation, we agreed to do the unthinkable. We would immigrate to the Backrooms.
Through researching various message boards, we prepared necessary tools and skills that would be needed to survive in the Backrooms. We each purchased large backpacks with a plastic reusable water bottle, some protein bars, and basic first aid supplies to minimize the chance that we would immediately die. We also brought portable battery packs and our phones to document our travels, and ask for advice if necessary, as well as string and markers to help navigate the large environment.
In terms of weapons, we determined that guns would be pointless. It may be difficult to find bullets to use, so we instead decided on purchasing bows and arrows, since we could retrieve and reuse all arrows fired. After much discussion regarding what was necessary, we determined that one compound bow and twenty arrows should be attached to each of our backpacks. Additionally, we knew that melee combat may be necessary too, so we settled on katanas for combat purposes, as they were relatively light weight, and appeared easy to use.
For the next week, we spent hours each day practicing our archery. Neither of us had much prior experience, but after relentless practice, we were confident that we could shoot relatively accurately.
The night before we attempted the no-clip, we added some last minute supplies, such as small flashlights, pocket knives, and tarps (if collecting water would be necessary). The next day, we returned to my childhood home.
“How does this stupid thing work?” muttered Jack as he stomped his foot at the base of the staircase.
Thankfully, the house was far away from others in the neighborhood and appeared vacant, so entering it did not draw any unwanted attention.
“It requires your entire body weight,” I stated matter-of-factly. “Well, I think your entire body weight plus some momentum,” I clarified. “My mom fell from the top of the staircase down to the bottom.”
“Eh, alright,” concluded Jack defeatedly. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
Jack climbed up before flinging himself sideways off the top of the stairs. He grunted as his arm hit the wooden staircase multiple times before crying out in confusion as his body slid through the floorboards.
Something about the human brain prohibits the body from making actions that are known to be painful. The pinky on a human finger can be bit off like a carrot, yet no human dares to try because no human desires to see the consequences of such an action.
After a few minutes of stalling, I convinced myself to just jump and think of the consequences later. Of course, I did jump backwards so my back could hopefully cushion the fall. Despite having my eyes closed, something about my fall felt unnatural. Perhaps it was due to the unusual length of time I was in freefall, or it could’ve been due to the impact of hitting the floor not hurting. I thought the surface I landed on would surely be rock solid, but my body felt as if it was landing on a damp, squishy cloud. As I opened my eyes to the painfully bright fluorescent light, I knew I was on Level 0 of the Backrooms.
“Hey, Jack,” I called in a loud whisper, as to not immediately draw the attention of any potential monsters.
“It’s fine, Matt,” replied Jack. “There are no other entities on Level 0, remember? There’s no need to be quiet. We just need to continue.”
“Alright, I have a marker. Let’s get started.”
According to my analog clock, it took us 13 days and 7 hours to no-clip to level 1, though it felt only like a few hours. We marked each direction we traveled so as to not get lost and attempted a no-clip together at every moment we felt the chance of doing so was probable. Obviously, our assessments of probability were often incorrect, but we eventually no-clipped together near a shaded wall that made us both uneasy staring at it.
Upon phasing through the wall, we found ourselves in a settlement that contained the sign “Base Alpha” in large painted letters. Though the explorers and wanderers at such an outpost were initially startled by our appearance (and initially brandished swords in our faces), they seemed to find pity in our terrified faces and welcomed us with open arms.
“Sorry,” muttered a man wearing a backwards baseball cap. “This place isn’t known to contain hostile entities, so you have to understand that we were startled by the arrival of two humanoids who were armed to the teeth,” he explained. “I’m General Frederick Sturgeon, head command at Base Alpha,” he exclaimed proudly before his expression shifted to inquisitive. “Wait, why do you have so much supplies?”
We attempted to explain our goal to General Sturgeon before he suddenly burst out laughing when we explained that we entered the Backrooms voluntarily..
“I don’t know if you’re stupid, or crazy, but this place… the Backrooms… is worse than all circles of hell combined. This isn’t exactly a vacation spot.”
“We’re not here for vacation,” Jack boomed. “We, Matt and I, want to find our moms. They’ve got to be alive. Well, Matt’s mom is alive, but mine must be too!”
“You’re Matt?” asked General Sturgeon, obviously startled by such a question. “Marissa said she was looking for you. Did you stumble on her forum post on Backrooms to Earth? Oh jeez, she is not gonna like this.”
“Why?” I demanded. “Why does she not want me here?”
“Matt,” stammered General Sturgeon as he removed his cap. “She wants you to be safe. She only talked about you for the past several years. But…” he stopped talking, as if choosing his words carefully. “Her love for you made her mind go a bit… loopy. She and three other members of this outpost fell for the temptation of the Gabriel Family’s false promises. I really couldn’t stop her. She just left while I was asleep three weeks ago.” He began to choke on his words.
“Matt, she’s planning on sacrificing other wanderers because she’s convinced that completing their blood ritual will bring her home.”