What is it about liminal spaces that transfix the mind? Isolation, familiarity, dark halls and corners, the tension of being somewhere forbidden. Stripped from their original, intended purposes in the absence of human life, these places become hollow; unmasked and forgotten. Their memories and history, lost or never made. Meaningless places stuck between points A and B. And to make them a destination is to enter a still reality not meant to be seen.
I saw them everywhere. The cracked parking lot of a laundromat, the still lobby of a hotel, the cramped interior of a car, the dusty cabinets of a distant relative’s house, untouched and ignored. Their commonality made life feel empty and glum. Life itself had become liminal: one long stretch between nonexistence.
So, the concept of the Backrooms and their haunting possibilities, naturally, filled me with excitement. A fictional universe of near infinite liminal locations: a blank canvas of pointless lands anyone could write life into. A cure for liminality. Twisted entities, mysterious items, reactive characters, warring factions, and thousands of levels for them to explore with limitless stories to be told. It was a collaborative plunge into the quietest, simplest fears our imaginations could offer.
But, as I tripped and fell through the sidewalk and landed somewhere cold and unknown, the Backrooms had become more than just a story. The sun was replaced by a bare light bulb. Its string dangled beside me, the end almost sweeping the floor. Shadows crept close. In the new dim night, a fear of the unexpected emerged from the claustrophobic walls of darkness which concealed my surroundings.
Heavy breathing, shaky fingers, and the pain of my falling entry were all I had at that moment. Having fallen so low, I’d joined the ranks of dust and century old stains on the hardwood floor. It was there, on the ground, I saw a subtle emerald light blinking from behind a doorless frame nearby. The floors groaned under my heavy footsteps as I followed the beacon like a mindless bug.
I was faced with a breaker box mounted at eye level upon entering a closet-sized room. It was rhythmically washed in green by a flat cone lamp hanging from a high ceiling. Steel wire tubing extended out of the box like slithering legs and ran along every surface of the room in clusters. A single tripped breaker sat within the oversized box. I flipped it with a satisfying snap and brought the place to life. The green lamp stopped responding, but a brighter yellow-white light awakened from behind.
I returned to what might’ve once been a living room. The amber wood beneath my feet laid in tattered despair. Their corners curved upward while entire planks bowed in full. The floor was a turbulent ocean stuck in time. The walls were no better. Where its surface coat of fermented white paint had flaked away, a sickly green showed. Another doorless frame stood on the same wall as the closet. There were no windows to offer an escape or a fresh view to break up the malignant decay. The naked light bulb and its long string rested at the center of a dizzyingly high-set popcorn ceiling. The room was a senile memory of itself. I felt rejected, caught somewhere hostile and forbidden like being in the depths of a bear den.
“No,” I muttered, retreating through the other doorway in search of an exit. A copy of the same empty living room welcomed me on the other side. It was identical down to the dust bunny. I stood in the frame, stuck in a mirror.
“Am I in Limbo?” I muttered. The simple question made my knees buckle and I slumped against the wall. Pranks couldn’t be so elaborate, dreams never felt so real. I wanted to go home. But, what if I couldn’t leave? Who else would feed my cat or do my job or wash the dishes? Nobody knew of my whereabouts or the existence of this place. I would die alone in mystery and obscurity. Who would even believe such a story if I returned home? My family would laugh at the idea that I slipped into the sidewalk and came out the other end. But, the truth often sounds like fantasy.
“No,” I repeated. “I couldn’t have. Impossible. It’s a silly internet story.” But, if it were only fiction, how could the silence be so potent? My weak murmurs were consumed by the still air. I felt foolish and crazy. Yet, I stood up straight and steeled my knees. Escape would only come if I found it myself.
I entered a third copy room. Then a fourth. And further it repeated until every square inch of the wretched place was seared into my mind. It began to overlay on the memories of my old living room. I imagined its furniture and feline occupying the shameful pretender. The fantasy felt real enough to be history. The difference was beginning to blur.
The cycle continued. Step through the doorway, avoid the same holes and rusted nails in the floorboards. Notice new consistent details and move on. At first, the fear of encountering something terrible haunted my mind. It made my stomach flutter and want to run away like a captive animal. Something had to greet me eventually. A hunched figure facing the corner, a bug hovering by the light bulb, a friend bursting out laughing from behind. The only signs of life were my own and the acceptance of isolation was slow, but true.
Suddenly, I fell. Not just to my feet, but a meter down. There weren’t any splinters to pick out of my hands to my surprise. Rather, the flayed wooden floor was now the ceiling. The room was upside down. It wasn’t as though gravity had reversed. I could see through the doorway, the room before was still upright and proper. This new room was simply designed to be upside down.
But if gravity hadn’t changed, then why did the light bulb string defy it? It pointed upward, still toward the hardwood as though locked into position. I tapped it. It waved from side to side like a strand of excited seaweed, refusing to fall limp and obey my gravity. Tugging it down to my ankles made it bounce and swing in greater arcs. I couldn’t make it make sense, so there it remained.
In the following room, the string was dead and spread around the bulb. Its connection was severed from the light, plucked from its source. I continued onward without a word, satisfied, but unnerved. Something knew I was there; what I was doing and thinking just moments before. Was it trying to please or play?
My thoughts and questions grew repetitive without answers. The rooms immediately returned to redundancy. Walking was less stimulating than staring at a blank piece of paper. The inverse orientation offered little else to explore. Boredom tried to take my mind back home, but holes were expanding through my memories. It began to feel like my life was never lived. Over twenty years of history were melting into gray mud. What remained were approximate objects and faces, nostalgic houses, voices, smooth shedding cat hair; silhouettes of ideas lost in a thick fog. Was it worth returning to? A life growing less familiar with every step.
I was walking in a scattered daze when a new hallway began. The sight was hardly exciting. The walls and floor were the same. It stretched into sightlessness, both forward and behind, as though the repeat rooms had never existed outside of a false memory. Flat conical lamps extended from both walls, alternating sides so they never faced each other. Short stretches of darkness separated their illuminated islands. Strips of white paint would peel as I passed, falling to the ground behind my striding feet. Identical branching halls hid in the absolute black between lamps. They never took me anywhere new.
I walked the insanity for what felt like hours before an eventual end began to dawn on the narrow horizon. It wasn’t a wall that blocked my path. It was the total end of light which halted my soul at the edge of sure footing. Each step forward would be a gamble with the unknown. The odds against me were unlimited.
But, I wasn’t going to turn back. Where else was there left to go? Maybe this was the exit I was wandering for. The thought didn’t stop me from hesitating with the first step. The tip of my scanning shoe tapped a flat surface. The floor hadn’t ended with the light. The walls hadn’t either. Matter lived on in the dark. Several meters in and my toes kicked a wall hidden before my eyes. There was new light far above. Like a chimney, the hall bent upward at ninety-degrees and continued farther than I could see. My curious fingers stuck to the inky invisible wall. Not from an adhesive, but from an unreal attraction. It held me tightly like a strong magnet.
“Of course,” I mumbled to myself. It seemed obvious in its absurdity. Without thinking, I climbed the wall like a spider, quickly and without resistance. And before long, I was crawling on a new ground, infantile and amazed. My lips curled into a smile for the first time since arrival.
But, the inevitable return to mundanity made it fall. Not into the frown I’d worn until that point, but into neutrality instead. Getting lost had become routine; wandering in body and mind. It was comfortable and thoughtless like drinking water. I felt myself walking more confidently into empty shadows. Lively footsteps echoed alone.
Passing each hall gambled my time and energy for an elusive exit or anomaly. The addiction kept me going as hunger or despair began to sprout. It was an odd form of entertainment, but the only one I had. And though I eventually won the odds of finding something new. It was a grim discovery.
Something terrible hid outside the bounds of those dark halls: a greater, ghastly place which surrounded the walls like a thick layer of insulation. It was the winter that killed my hope of escape. Strong buzzing emitted from a gaping hole in the ceiling line. A pile of paint and drywall laid beneath. Old wet carpet, maddening mono-yellow, and loud fluorescent bulbs. The true Backrooms were peering down at me through a break in its own creation. My vision strained from the powerful light and stomach cramped from the must and mildew. It had been watching all along, guiding me through its halls. I was a germ in its veins, and the force of the realization was an avalanche on my chest.
Its presence was nauseating, so I ran. My legs moved on their own while my eyes scanned every inch of the passing halls. An upward staircase was at the far end of a hallway to my left. I wasn’t foolish enough to take the convenient escape. But, the next branching hall led to the same stairs. All the halls did. It was coming up before me. I looked behind and found it followed. An upward wooden staircase waited patiently only a meter away. I didn’t have a choice, this place wouldn’t give me one. I fell to my knees like a stubborn child in the advent of a tantrum. It couldn’t make me climb the stairs if I didn’t want to.
And so the ground opened up instead. The jagged floorboards separated like teeth and ate me alive. I slid down a cold smooth surface in pitch black for a brief moment. I was spat into the corner platform of a staircase. The same wood floors, the same peeling white paint. A new prison, but it was all the same. I screamed and smacked the walls in pure madness. Curses flew from my lips. They were pointed in every direction. At myself, at the Backrooms, at conscious life itself.
As I panted in breathless fury, forehead pressed against the wall, I noticed something new. The green paint had become porous. Holes of various sizes had opened up to a starry abyss. Some were large enough to fit my fingers while others barely let the pinprick stars shine through. It was empty beyond the threshold. Only open space and the promise of far off light; of other planets and people, or many more miles of identical empty corridors. Perhaps it was only fluorescent light peeking through dots in a black background.
The descending stairs turned and disappeared behind a right-angle corner. They led into a darkness I had no intention of exploring. The few ascending steps led to an abrupt wall with a window at its center. An opaque, white plastic film hid the glass. The camouflaged white frame peeked out from underneath. Above the window hung a lamp from a short, thin chain. Two exposed Edison bulbs offered a weak glow. I imagined the hideous original Backrooms sealed behind the plastic by a previous wanderer. But, I wanted to see if it were true. My thumb sank deep into the window cover as I tried to tear through. The plastic stretched inward until my entire forearm was immersed, but it never tore.
With so few options, I chose to retire to the pocket of stairs and shallow light. My old life was dead. It died along with the memories of my house and of the faceless people and furniture that lived within. If they could find purpose without my presence, then I could find mine in the stairs. A faint ray of sun, the sliver of a reason to live.
It was a short and peaceful time. When hungry, I’d eat my hair and skin and paint chips. Stretching the window plastic like putty subdued my shaking rage and mired depression. Dreaming of the starry depths offered a temporary escape. Sleep was a lush, lonely valley of stone, vines, and metal pipes. There I could stretch my legs and wander. Wild food was abundant. The cool wind carried soothing bird-songs. It’s where I spent most of my time and so it became more of a home than the stairs itself.
Why couldn’t I have no clipped into my inner empire instead? Because the Backrooms wanted to take everything from me. To leave me stripped and mad and dependent on its walls. It found satisfaction in it. My life, my choices, time, mind, and future all fell into its control. Standing amongst the sky, the last I saw of the valley was a misty pond far below. I jumped from a cliff, soared, then sank into the frigid pool and awoke in a bed of mud.
The stairs were dripping, oozing into each other like molten stone. I held my mushy ground until the stairwell had decayed into a slide. Clawing and kicking at the walls for leverage only hastened my new home’s demise. Heat radiated from my face in the embarrassment of failed defiance. The descent scrambled my head, orientation was lost in the spinning and tumbling. All I could do was shield myself and pray for the chaos to end. Every sharp turn down the stairwell threw me into a wall, which shook and weakened upon impact. They were collapsing under the weight of the rushing wood slurry.
A wall crumbled before me and led to a splat; stillness on stable ground. Liquid followed in heavy flow. It covered me like a runny blanket. Aching with pain, I laid face down waiting for my conscience to catch up. Tears and snot mixed into the sludge. Fists beat and splashed. I felt like a fool. What was there left to take? My home, routines and relationships, memories, patience and cleanliness, cell and sanity: gone. I had to reevaluate. Messy mind, fading life, the damp rags that hugged clammy skin, the old phone in my right pocket, and leather wallet in the left. The Backrooms were winning. Rolling over, I extracted my ID from the wallet and gazed at the picture. A stranger returned the stare. I tossed the useless card and stood up. My hands shook. They wanted to rob the robber.
The room was simple. It had no exits or decor. Only the same barren walls and dead floor. It was filled with harsh light, but the ceiling was absent any sources. The holes in the walls were growing like excited mold colonies. Cracks ran between them like widening rivers. The backdrop of stars steadily grew as flecks of white and green paint fell and fluttered through the room like snow and summer leaves.
The old amber wood floor was rending. I centered myself on the largest remaining platform. I stuffed any wood chips or bits of the wall that floated close enough to snatch into my pockets. Once they were brimming, I filled my mouth, chewed, and swallowed. The sharp pieces were soaked in blood from my gums. We were unified, the rooms and I. And I was needed if they wanted to become whole again. Victory felt freeing like a loosened collar.
The ceiling and walls were gone. Their remains drifted into the expanses of space and joined with the starlight. My heart thumped as the floorboards under my feet followed. I scrambled for them. They crumbled to dust and sifted through my fingers like the draining sands of time. Weightlessness filled my queasy stomach and a final gasp filled my lungs. Forty desperate seconds passed in the emptiness of space. Another breath came.
The void is comforting. Air is abundant. My blood hasn’t boiled, my skin hasn’t frozen over. The radiant heat of far fiery plasma warms the bones. I spend a great deal of time in thought, furiously typing with fading phone battery the story before your eyes. Beads of sweat separate from my forehead and float into view. More dots to the star field.
The glittering light encases me in every direction like a bubble. Painted throughout, the cradles of stars, vast nebulae of layered gas in every shade and shape, brew like stormy waters. The scene never sleeps. All the activities, so grand and irrespective of my presence, demand awe and respect. This place is no vacuum or prison; there are no materials to hold me down. A boundless domain of lawful solitude: a true home.
But space is disorienting. How long have I been drifting and in which direction? Time may take every destination before I arrive. The stars do cannibal dance. They fuse into fewer and larger bodies. A splash of light explodes from every impact and what fragments remain collide in chains of parsec lightning. A celestial fireworks display of dying creation. My eyes sear from the overload, but to close them would be a disservice. I desperately try to describe the universal performance with the excitement of being its audience.
The nebulae and survivor stars mix into solid waves of blue, pink, and purple light. They crash and settle into a great shimmering ring of aurora at the farthest edges of space. And with impossible speed, the trillions of lightyears worth of photons condense into a meter diameter around my puny planet waist. Its light, only a cell of its true brightness, now fainter than the old Edison bulbs of the Backrooms. Time is on its deathbed and to be its only companion is a terrifying honor. Eternal night cuts its unity. It shatters into scraps of desperate glow like the last embers of a cold ashen fire. It’s their final act, a weak encore. The splendor fizzles into emptiness. The end of the universe, over in an hour.
The abyss is claustrophobic and motionless. I ponder while drifting like a fish in a midnight trench. Why was I brought here? To be rewarded with torment and the weight of universal annihilation? And where is here? Yet another room within the Backrooms; the container of infinity? Every answer is only a theory. All I know is that existence doesn’t end in darkness. My thoughts still come from somewhere and whistles echo into eternity. Perhaps there’s a floor I’m slowly falling towards where a green lamp flickers nearby. Or, maybe long beyond space and time, I’ll find Earth again, waiting in the dark end. A lifeless planet for an ant.
My phone’s soft blue glow is a dreadful hope. Every tap siphons a final percentage of life. As the little star fades and my mind finally fails, a faint signal of anomalous service will carry my words to reaches unknown. They will bring the death of everything into the afterlife of your eyes, not to be forgotten and for nothing. And until then, the remnants of home will remain in my memory, here in the nowhere, as well.