I’m shaking with fear, darting through the streets of London and looking over my shoulder as I send this voice-to-text.
I don’t know how long I can run for. My legs are like jelly, I’ll need to stop soon but I can’t. I can’t let them catch me.
I need to get the truth out about what I saw at work today.
You’ll need some background: I work (well, worked) at the Omniverse Pathway Syndicate, OPS for short. It’s this inconspicuous building in central London, (sorry, Mum. I don’t actually work in insurance!) and my job there was to guard a door that is not so much a door, but a portal to a nightclub in another universe.
You might think ‘wow that’s so sci-fi, how cool!’ but let me tell you. It’s not that exciting.
I literally sit on a fold-up chair and stare at a door from 8pm to 4am. It’s so boring, I can’t even relax and pass the time on my phone because around these portals, nothing electronic works. So I basically just sit there, watch and I’ll pull the alarm if something out of the ordinary happens.
There’s nothing special about the actual door itself, really. It’s just a free standing wooden door with nothing on the other side.
Well, besides a club in another universe. That’s for certain.
I can always hear faint techno music coming through the door, the bass frequencies booming through the wood like a heartbeat.
And sometimes, I even catch brief moments of murmuring, muffled conversations of club patrons through the grain.
Very occasionally the door handle jiggles.
The most exciting days are when people stumble through the door. Most of them emerge with a drink in hand and a bemused look on their face. They’re drunk and/or lost. The inky stamp on their left wrist is always too smudged for me to decipher the name of the club, but I always try.
When some drunk does happen to walk through, (and that happens maybe a few times a year) I spring into action. I pull an alarm and a specialised OPS team swoop in, whisk the person away, wipe their memories, lead them back through the door, and call it a day. The team have to work fast because the longer a club-goer is lost in our universe, the more damage it does to their brain. It’s true - even after a few minutes, I swear you can see their eyeballs start to swell and protrude from their sockets.
The portal affects their electronics too because their phones and watches always seem to have the wrong time, like always 40 or so minutes out.
Bit weird.
But I digress. Let me explain what happened this evening.
So I’m an hour or two into my shift. And I’m breaking up the time by doing squats and a few leg stretches when I hear weird noises coming through the door.
There’s music, of course. There always is. But there’s something else under the music. This is cries. Screams. Shrieks. I stop my lunges and walk over to the door. Tentatively, I put an ear against the wood. I hold my breath and listen.
Suddenly, the door flies open and pushes me hard in the face. But before I can react to the pain, a shadow fills the doorway, It’s something heavy - it’s a person! - and it’s falling on me.
I land hard on the ground with the figure sprawling on top of me. At first, I think it’s another drunk raver, but I quickly realise something is seriously wrong because it’s not moving.
It’s a body.
I frantically scramble from underneath its heavy, dead weight and its head lolls in my lap, staring up at me.
It is me.
My eyes are vacant and cloudy. Skin deathly pale. And weird wounds cover my face, no wait, they are everywhere - puncture holes, evenly spaced, the size of a 10p coin.
Blood is coming from the wounds. They are deep. So deep that I can see through a hole through my right cheek to the linoleum floor.
I shake my dead body in my arms, ‘wake up, wake up’ I find myself chanting hysterically. I don’t know what I am expecting will happen. The skin feels cold and it’s so limp and heavy. There are so, so many wounds. So many that I can feel each one of my fingers pressing into open flesh.
I’m choking back screams when, in the corner of my eye, something in the room moves.
I turn my head slowly towards the door, my heart pounding, and see this, this… hand… a veiny, sinewy human-like hand slowly reaching out of the doorway.
Its wrist turns and a bony elbow follows and bends. Spindly grey fingers stretch and flex in the air. My breath shakes.
The hand is about a foot away from me and getting closer and closer.
Suddenly, it grabs my dead body’s head and I stifle a scream. I’m staring in shock as its cracked fingernails dig into the scalp and it begins to slowly drag my body by the hair through the portal.
Instinctively, I try to hold on to my body’s shoulders but it’s no use. I can feel the hand is so inhumanely strong, I know I don’t stand a chance.
So I let go and helplessly watch my trainers disappear through the void of the door.
I’m left sitting there, trembling, dimly aware that the sounds of screams and cries are coming through the door louder now. The bass is thumping, and my heart is too - completely out of sync.
I am in a daze. I’m not sure for how long I sat there for but eventually, I come to my senses and pull the alarm. The OPS team run in and find me slumped against a wall, wide eyed with fear and covered in blood.
I let the team guide me to the HR office, a place I’ve never stepped foot in before. When I arrive, I’m taken aback by how big it is. There’s only one desk, and there’s this older guy with glasses sitting behind it, giving me a curious look from his pile of paperwork.
He gestures for me to sit down, hands me a tissue, and says he’ll grab me a glass of water. I try to clean the blood off my hands, but it’s no use, it isn’t coming off. I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and sink into the chair with my head in my hands.
Suddenly my blood runs cold. My eyes snap open as I realise something.
The dead body was wearing the exact outfit that I am wearing right now.
Before I can process this, suddenly, the man is behind me. He places a reassuring hand on my shoulder and I jump at his touch. He asks me to recount what has happened. So I do. I know there is no security camera footage he can view, so I try to provide as much detail as possible.
His hand on my shoulder doesn’t move but I can feel the tiny muscles in it contract and relax as I tell the story and it makes me feel uneasy. He flinches when I mention that the body is wearing the same clothes I am wearing today.
After I finish, he calmly suggests I consider having a lie down in the employee lounge, but I interject and tell him I am quitting OPS, effective immediately. I can hear my voice is becoming shrill and panicky, my eyes are glued to the exit.
I turn to face him and hold out my hand for him to take. He considers it for a moment before shaking with a tight grip.
I collect my belongings from my locker, my hands trembling as I clumsily put my phone in my pocket. I suddenly feel like I’m being watched.
I’m out of the building in record time and I unlock my phone straight away. For a moment, I consider calling the police but realise I have no real evidence of anything that has just happened this evening. Would the police even believe my story? The blood on my clothes is technically mine, I can’t prove anything.
And as I’m jogging out of the building into the cold, London air, I catch my first glimpse of a suit following me.
So here I am, rushing through the streets of London, speaking into my phone and hoping that all this is being transcribed.
I know I’m being followed. I can see my pursuers turning the corner now. There seems to be more of them.
What do they want?! Shit! A dead end. OK hang on. I need to get off the street now. I need to hole up.
Let me just run into this big building - I’ll hide, and give my location so maybe someone who reads this can come help get me out.
They haven’t followed me in here, thank God. I can see them through the window. They’re outside pacing, looking at the building and shouting into their radios. There’s about twenty of them now and they look … nervous?
Wow it’s a bit intense in here. There’s so many people. The music is so loud and everyone is dancing.
I’m pushing through a crowd of sweaty bodies, feeling a little relieved that there seems to be a lot of places I can hide in this club - they’ll never find me!
I hope this is still transcribing correctly. Let me just find out the name of this place…The bass in here is intense… wait… I think I can hear people screaming?