I know something is wrong before I open my eyes. The sheets are too soft, nothing like the cotton ones back in my own bed. These feel silky, expensive. I sit upright, struggling to keep my breathing steady as I survey my surroundings. I am in a small, windowless bedroom. A desk stands at the foot of the single bed. It’s entirely plain apart from two wireless monitors positioned side by side. No visible system block, keyboard, or mouse. The right screen displays me moving around in real-time, squinting as I try to make out the contents of the left screen. I shift down the bed until the chatroom window comes into focus.
LittleBig209: hi Brad
JoeCockerSpaniel: morning Brad
LovelaceCuck: looking good Brad
PertixXx: Brad hey
My pixelated reflection cringes. Whoever took me from my home has not bothered to change me into anything more presentable. I still have a food-stained t-shirt and boxers on. My chin is covered in peach fuzz, leftover from a weekend of sitting around drinking and gaming. It’s not a good look. I jump out of bed and walk over to the door. It’s locked. There is an A4 sheet of paper taped to the oak panel at eye level. It’s a printed list titled ‘Tip Goals’.
Earn 5 tokens to turn off the alarm
Earn 10 tokens to get rid of the woman
A deafening noise blares through the room before I can get past the second bullet point. It’s shrill like a car alarm, but it comes from everywhere at once. It’s a volume level that doesn’t exist on any human device. I press my palms to my ears, stick my fingers inside. My hearing starts deteriorating, fast. I run back over to the screens. The chatroom layout is similar to a cam site, with a large thumbnail showing that I have earned 0 coins for my ‘show’.
lemONunmatched: take off your shirt
tasty_testy69: show us that dadbod
maGneT_freck76: that tee needs a wash you dirty boy
I pull off my shirt, flinching as my gut bounces down. The tips roll in. LovelaceCuck tips 2 tokens, l111ckme gives me 3. The alarm stops. My body relaxes and I sit back down on the bed, rubbing my temples. Everything is happening too fast. I need a second to arrange my thoughts, study the room. My naked toes pinch the shag carpet beneath my feet. My eyes run over the whitewash walls. There is no furniture apart from the bed and desk. There are no wall sockets.
The hell was that part about 10 tokens?
The door swings open and a tall, thin woman enters the room. I am used to averting my gaze with women, especially attractive ones, so my eyes naturally dart away from her approaching frame. I am just in time to read the warning messages popping up in the chat.
DixieUntruths928: you have to ignore her, Brad
pinkypr0mise_2222: be safe daddy-o
LittleBig209: don’t look her in the eye
Xxkinky-slinky: don’t listen, it’s not what you think
“Please help me,” she whimpers, “I need to get out of here. I just woke up in the room next door. There are people watching me.”
I remain seated on the bed, arms pulled tight around my gut. My eyes water as I stare at the white of the chatroom screen, unblinking. The woman sits down beside me.
“Are you okay?” her voice is sympathetic, kind, “Maybe we can help each other?”
The woman places a hand on my knee and starts to rub it. I see it from the corner of my eye. It is small, dainty. The fingers are long, manicured pink. Her touch is softer than the sheets, though her hand is cold. There is something familiar about this hand, the fingertips. The pink nails are shaped to look just like ballerina pumps. A shape I recognize but can’t quite place.
I don’t look up. The chatroom is blowing up with warnings.
“Why are you ignoring me?” the voice changes, gets deeper, “Look at me.”
Her palm clenches my leg, nails digging into my skin. She brings her face close to mine, the tip of her nose grazing my temple. My body breaks out in cold sweat, like I’m dreaming, feverish. The woman opens her mouth. I think she will say something, but she doesn’t. The mouth stretches, gapes, extending far beyond human possibility. I feel the breath from her cavernous mouth on my ear. I hear saliva dripping off the top layer of teeth.
The woman snarls from the depths of her throat. Her nails break into the skin on my leg.
I keep my eyes on the chat screen. tBallZ255 tips me ten tokens and the woman snaps her jaw shut with a toothy crunch. She stands up from my side and walks out of the room.
A lock clicks.
I rush over to the door. My life depends on reading the whole list. I don’t know how I got here, but this is definitely some sick fuck’s idea of a game. Only there are no checkpoints, no room for screwing up. I skim the rest of the ‘Tip Goals’ list. The first two are done.
Earn 5 tokens to turn off the alarm
Earn 10 tokens to get rid of the woman
Earn 25 tokens to save Halley
Earn 50 tokens to turn on the oxygen pump
Earn 100 tokens to unlock the door
My stomach sinks when I read Halley’s name. She is my childhood best friend. We used to spend all our time together, but then I tried kissing her at a party and got mad when she rejected me. Things haven’t been the same since. Halley still calls and we engage in small talk, but that’s about it. What does she have to do with all this?
meet_balls348: why did you think she owed you more Brad?
good4thebody: why was your pride more important than friendship?
Insideyou22: now you’re alone
itbURNS_: and how is Halley doing?
There is a change on the second screen.
My harrowed face is gone. It’s replaced by video footage of a neat bedroom. The color theme is green-blue, floral. There are potted plants and paintings, small throw pillows adorn the canopy bed. I’d recognize her eye for decorum anywhere. This must be Halley’s new place. I’d been meaning to stop by since she moved. How long ago was that, exactly? A couple of weeks? Months? A year?
The colors of the room invert. It’s nighttime, the camera feed is infra-red. The throw pillows have been moved to an armchair and there is a lump on the bed. Halley sleeping? There are no speakers on the monitors, but I swear I can hear her bedroom door creak as it opens. A dark shape slithers inside. I struggle to define it. There are no distinct characteristics. It is dark and flat, wide like a pancake but jagged and rotating. It is just a weird dark spot, easily a lazy video edit, but it fills me with more dread than anything else that has happened in this room. Whatever the fuck that thing is, I don’t want it anywhere near Halley.
It slithers to the edge of the bed, up the side of it and under the covers. I punch the screen and cry out. My scream is emotional, raw, but ultimately pointless. Pixels dance on the feed, but the image holds steady enough for me to see the way the blanket moves on top of Halley.
I glance at the chat.
JoeCockerSpaniel: get under the covers
wallfly13_: lie under the blanket
lemONunmatched: get into bed and it will come to you instead
I turn away from the screens and crawl back into bed, pulling the covers over my head.
My frantic breaths heat the air beneath the cover, forming a sauna of my exhaled carbon dioxide. Beads of sweat run down my face, neck. They pool beneath me, drenching the nice sheets. A wave of cool air hits me as someone - something - lifts the blanket at the foot of the bed. A dark mass envelops my toes, slowly moving up my legs and stomach, stopping just short of my neck. It lies on top of me, heavy like a person, but devoid of any human warmth. Its cool skin feels alien, rubbery.
My heartbeat is amplified, drumming against the smooth surface. My leg twitches, and the thing digs into the sides of my calf, pinning my leg down. So that’s how this works. If I try to move, try to escape, it will hold me in place, constricting my movements until it squeezes the life out of me.
I lie still and wait. I think back to the previous night, trying to figure out how I got here. I remember sleeping in because it’s the weekend, drinking too much vodka, as always, playing some games. Nothing extraordinary, yet something tugs at the corners of my mind. There is something I’m missing. A fragment of memory dancing just out of reach.
What the hell happened last night?
The longer we lie together, the darkness and me, the more singular we become. I think about the way it entered Halley’s room, the way it climbed into her bed. Once I start picturing it, the entity moves, almost like it’s responding to my thought patterns. It wraps itself around my body entirely, slipping its coolness between me and the sheets. It stretches to cover my head until I am cocooned inside.
It feels… good? There’s that sense of familiarity again. That gnawing in my gut that tells me this is what I truly want, deep down. My breathing is calmer than it has been all night. The darkness is still, peaceful. My thoughts grow vacant. I no longer need to know what happened last night. I don’t care who the pink nailed woman is. I’m sure my friend will be fine. What was her name again? Holly?
As fluidly as it swaddled me, the darkness begins to sink. Its particles loosen, vibrate. They melt on my body. Seep into my skin.
I shiver.
I sit up. I’m going to be sick. I start gagging, dry heaving into my lap. It’s like my body wants to get rid of the foreign body, but doesn’t know how. I throw my head back, gasping for breath, but there is no sustenance for my lungs. I throw off the blanket, gulping the air like a fish out of water. My rib cage spasms and I feel like I’m choking on glass. How can something as natural as breathing hurt this much?
Earn 50 tokens to turn on the oxygen pump.
Back to the chat screen. I have missed at least a hundred messages, but I received some more tokens. I have 40 total now. I need 10 more to breathe.
missingThursday420: how does it feel, Brad?
Insideyou22: you are so close now
JoeCockerSpaniel: isn’t this what you wanted?
The room spins as I fall from the bed to the floor. The cells in my brain writhe in pain, dying off one by one. Another ten seconds and I will be a vegetable. Ten after that and I will die.
“No,” I croak at the screen as my vision turns black, “Help me.”
Just like that, I am able to breathe again. It’s a hit like no other. My lungs reel in pain, but my brain explodes with the ecstasy of life.
The door swings open and someone walks into the room. I watch their black dress shoes glide across the floor. I sit up and take in the person’s appearance. I don’t know what to make of it. They are neither tall, average, nor short. Every step they take shifts their proportions considerably. They are slender, but muscular. Effeminate in movement but masculine in stance. They have long gray hair, but it lacks the volume and styling of a woman’s cut. They wear a tailored black suit with a lace trim blouse underneath. They are the personification of neutral, if beige were a person they’d be it.
They walk over to the screens and turn both of them off. They settle on the furthest side of the bed and cross their legs.
“We need to talk about your life, Brad,” their deep, authoritative voice fills the room, “I’ve been watching you. We all have.”
“What is this place?” I choke out, my throat burning from my recent suffocation.
“A place where you can die. A place where I can kill you with just my fingertips. Is that what you want, Brad?”
“No.”
“Why not?” the person smiles with their eyes. I thought they were hazel, but now I notice they are ruby-red, otherworldly, “It’s just a matter of time anyway. You live alone. You never call or see anyone. The rats in the walls are likely to find you before any sort of help arrives.”
I open my mouth to say something, horror freezing me in place. I close my eyes, trying to suppress the tears. What is this person telling me? Have I died? Am I dying?
I open my eyes.
The person on the bed is gone. A gaping blackness remains in their place. It’s like someone pinched a canvas, ripping a hole in the middle of a painting. The whole room caves in around the hole. It is magnetic, radiant. The power of nothing, of forgetting, of ceasing to exist. The void beckons me. I want to climb through. I want to feel nothing.
Wait, that’s not true. I want to feel something.
The chat screen monitor lights up.
slidey-fuck4: join us Brad
curlyTITS: we have a lot of fun
Insideyou22: we play many games
I walk up to the blackness, observe it. It grows, expands. If I don’t make the choice myself, it will still happen. The void will fill the room and swallow me whole. It would be so easy to climb the bed and fall through.
I reach my left hand into the hole and a sharp pain pulses through my arm. I recoil, stumbling back. My hand is blistered, charred. The skin bubbles. The void grows faster now, sucking up the bed, inching toward the floor. No way am I subjecting the rest of my body to that black fire. I run to the door, the list still in place.
Earn 100 tokens to unlock the door
“I want to live,” I scream into the shrinking room, fists banging on the door, “Let me out!”
The lock clicks and I throw the door open. I stumble out into a blinding light. It is so bright, so vivid. There is no ground beneath my feet, I fall through the white.
***
I cough myself awake. I’m lying on the floor of my rundown studio apartment. The wood panels are cold, sticky on my back. The ceiling fan multiplies as my eyes struggle to focus. I turn my head to see my desktop. I have two monitors. One shows a game lobby, the other a cam site. The girl on the stream brings a vibrating toy up to the camera lens, she grasps it in her dainty, manicured hand. Her long fingers slide over the length of it seductively. The nails are painted pink, shaped like ballerina shoes. Or coffins.
Three empty bottles of booze stand on the desk. The first one is my regular choice of vodka, but the other two are plastic, unlabeled. I recognize them as the moonshine my neighbor has been trying to sell me for weeks. I have politely declined his offers in the past, but maybe last night was different?
Did I really drink that shit?
I try to sit up as a wave of nausea pins me back to the ground. I vomit inside my own mouth, twisting my neck to spit. My head spins, my body breaks out in convulsions. I can’t move my left arm or leg. My spine feels like it’s twisting around itself, my guts turning. I use my right hand to fish out my phone and call emergency services.
“911, what is your emergency?”
My tongue is rubber but I manage the words, “I am dying.”
“Sir? Where are you now?” the operator’s voice grows distant, “Sir?”
***
More light as I come to. Fluorescent bulbs dance above my head, then stabilize. Machines beep and whirr. I can move my arms and legs, but only a little because I am so weak. My left hand is covered in bandages.
The door to my hospital room opens and a nurse walks inside. They are fully scrubbed in green, so I can’t tell if they are a man or a woman. They come over to check my pulse, move my arms. I avoid looking at them. I am ashamed to be here. I have drunk myself sick many a night, but it has never resulted in a hospital visit.
“You sure did a number on your hand there Brad,” a familiar voice chides.
The nurse lifts my left arm to examine the bandages on my hand. My stomach sinks and my heartbeat explodes in my chest. I look into the nurse’s eyes. Ruby red.
“Wha-,” I stammer, “It was real?”
“Your choice to stay alive?” the person raises an eyebrow as they remove the bandage on my arm catheter, “Yes, it was.”
“The room, the rules,” I mumble, my insides turning. I thought it was a nightmare, a hallucinatory side effect of alcohol poisoning. I want to close my eyes, to blink this person out of existence.
“Ah yes,” the person nods, “Pre-purgatory has gotten a little predictable over the past few centuries. Some folks are trying to spruce it up a bit. Rules are all the rage right now with those demons, you know how it is.”
I stare at the person. I imagine my face is blank, stupid.
“Now now, away with such thoughts,” they say, replacing the drip and re-bandaging my catheter, “I’m not going to pretend that things will magically improve. Your life is not much better than the first few circles right now, but it can be. You have quick reflexes, a keen mind. Just take it one day at a time.”
“I didn’t try to kill myself,” I raise my voice, my undamaged hand curling in a fist.
“There are other ways to invite death into your life, Brad,” the person starts removing the bandages from my hand. I stare in disbelief as patches of black become visible. My hand looks like it suffered severe frostbite. I can’t move any of my fingers.
“It will heal,” the person says simply, “Not quickly, mind you, but it will.”
I want to say something else, to ask more questions, but a sudden fear grips my chest. I think of the room, the rules, the chat screen. I remember my time there with unnatural clarity. I can zone in on every minute detail.
I don’t want to say the wrong thing. I don’t want to wind up back in that place.
The person finishes rebandaging my hand. They lay my arm down at my side, pick up a clipboard, write something down, and walk out of my hospital room without another word.
The rest of the day passes in a blur. A doctor comes and goes. More nurses, all normal. They ask if there’s anyone they can call, but I say no. In the evening, when I’m left alone, I take my phone from the nightstand and dial Halley’s number.
“Brad!” she practically squeals in my ear, “I’m so glad you called. I haven’t heard from you in ages. How are you?”
My heart freezes in my chest as I consider lying. All the terrors experienced in that room pale in comparison to admitting my failures, to letting someone in, to admitting the truth.
“Brad?”
I breathe heavy, my good hand trembles. I’m on the verge of hanging up when I remember the darkness, the void. How close I came to it.
My mouth goes dry.
“I’m not doing so great, Hal,” I say, my voice choked with emotion, “I think I need your help.”
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