I don’t normally wake up in the middle of the night, but ever so often i get up to use the bathroom, get a snack, or because I hear a noise. My house has a staircase running from mine and my parents’ room to the living room. The staircase isn’t that long, and you can see the bottom from the top very clearly, maybe if I wasn’t so drowsy I would have noticed the pitch black void in the place of my living room, before I started climbing down.
I woke up around one o’clock in the morning. You know when something happens in the real world, and you can hear it in your dream. I heard a phone ringing in the distance, instantly bringing me to a state of lucid dreaming. Shortly after I entered lucidity, I woke up from a feeling of urgency and paranoia. I then realized what was wrong, the ring didn’t match my phone, my mother’s phone, my father’s, not even any of the two landline phones we had in the kitchen. I assumed maybe we had gotten a new phone, trying to ground myself in reality until I realized the phone had been ringing for over five minutes, i sat up slowly, still feeling the exhaustion of the day before, I felt my heart beating fast but I still couldn’t wake myself up, I slumped out of bed, and managed to stand up.
The state of my body instantly reminded me of a video game I played a while back, I think it was called Manual Samuel, In that game you had to like, control Samuel’s limbs, making him walk, talk, and you had to control his breathing too. As I forced myself to my bedroom door, still hearing that annoying ringing, I found it hard to control my body, a lot like that game I just mentioned. I made it to the door and stepped out of my room. I noticed that i didn’t hear my dad snoring, my dog wasn’t sitting in front of my door. I flipped the light switch, preparing for the blinding surge of light, but there was nothing. I checked the lamps, the light bulbs were all shattered. It really should have been more shocking to me but i was still fighting off the feeling of fatigue and drowsiness.
I then made the worst mistake of my life, I started walking down the stairs, the second I started walking I was zapped awake, the phone stopped ringing, and everything fell deathly silent. I immediately looked back and saw nothing, I mean I didn’t see the entrance to my room, I didn’t see any of my lamps, it was just more stairs. even the wallpaper was different, no longer the aged white wallpaper, now it was a deep maroon with black stripes, the carpeted stairs were replaced with hard wood. I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight, i pointed it towards the void in front of and behind me, the beam disappeared just a few feet into the void. I nearly dropped my phone when I got another idea. “Hey google, What is my current location?” somehow I still had some service, once google maps loaded, I saw it. It was my house, my street, I didn’t move, I’m still in my house.
I’ve been walking for hours now, or at least what felt like hours. I still somehow have service, I’ve tried calling the cops, my father, my mother, anyone and everyone in my contacts. every call has been met with a gurgled static, it almost sounds like talking, like when your in a school cafeteria, or a heavily populated party, it sounds like talking but you can never get a word out of it. Whenever I stop walking, I hear something, almost like an inaudible whispering. PLEASE, if anyone knows how to get out of this you have to tell me, i have my own theory, i think time has stopped around me, i forgot to mention that my battery hasn’t gone down, my clock hasn’t changed. wherever i am, i’m going to keep walking, i’m afraid of what will happen if i stop for too long.