My surrounding environment is as it is in my dreams.
Endless, featureless, white-tiled walls… slick with condensation, illuminated ever so faintly in a gentle shade of blue. I cannot identify the light’s source, as I do not appear to be casting any kind of shadow.
I stand between two pools of turquoise, shimmering water. The filters hiss quietly, and this ongoing sound is occasionally joined by a soft gurgling from down below.
The air is thick with the smell of chlorine.
It’s just like the place my Dad used to bring me when I was a kid. There’s a few key differences, of course, but the aesthetic is the same. The place I’m in now is just stretched. Distorted. And there are no others here. No other people. Only me.
I glance over my shoulder.
There is a sign attached to the wall. One directly above the other.
‘NO DIVING’, it reads, with a picture of a stick figure diving in the water. He has been encircled and crossed through with red lines.
The text reads as it should in plain English, but, curiously the image itself is upside down; the stick figure appears to be diving ‘upwards’, towards the ceiling.
I consider my surroundings again. I look down at my hands and stretch my fingers, clenching them into a fist.
….At what point did this stop being a dream? I wonder.
Because I’m not dreaming. Not anymore. The tile is cool and hard beneath my feet. I can feel the pseudo-tropical heat against my skin. I have memories. I have a sense of self. I do not know how I got here, but… I am here. Of that, I have no doubts.
So where to go next? No use standing around.
There appear to be four exits immediately available to me. One directly beside the NO DIVING sign. It takes the form of an archway in the tile, and leads away around a corner.
There are two identical routes ahead of me, at the far end of this room. They are simple rectangular holes in the wall, and the light down that way shimmers in faint pink.
And there is another archway in the wall to my right. One smaller than the first. Closer to the floor. I’d have to stoop to get through it. No light comes from this archway. Through the gap in the tile is only pitch black. Total, all-encompassing darkness. It makes me feel cold just to look at it.
I opt for the pink rectangular doorways opposite, the two pools on either side flanking me as I walk between them.
The water ripples gently and laps at the edges of the tile as I traverse the length of the room. I can feel the wetness of the floor against the soles of my feet.
Yes… that’s right…I’m not wearing any shoes.
I check myself. My inventory, if you will.
I am barefoot. I am wearing an adult-sized pair of the swimshorts I always wore as a kid. Blue, with pockets, and covered in little sharks.
In my pocket I find my phone. I try to turn it on, to use it…
…But all I am given is a blank blue screen, and the keyboard. I can input text, but, it isn’t clear if the text can actually go anywhere.
What else am I wearing?
I am wearing a shirt. Tropical in its design. Blue, and orange. One of my Dad’s old shirts.
…And that’s it. Curious.
I don’t know why I’m not more frightened. Perhaps the fear will come later. For now, I’m just taking the situation as it comes. That’s what I was always taught to do, anyway.
I reach the end of the room and pass through the rectangular door on the right, though I don’t think it mattered which one I actually chose as they both lead into the same room.
I look around.
This second room is multi-layered. I can see two, maybe three further floors above me. To my left is a spiralling staircase, ascending, likewise made from tile, and to my right is another staircase, though this one descends. Down it goes, down beneath the surface of a shimmering pool, and down it continues. Deeper and deeper underwater until it vanishes from sight, blurred and lost to the blue.
I can’t explain why, exactly, but this unsettles me. The implication that one is supposed to be able to go lower, that one may even be enticed to go lower, but is, surely, unable…
I look back up. Across from me is another doorway. It leads into what appears to be a large, open hall…. But the doorway stands on an island at the far side of an enormous pool, and I would have to swim to it in order to get there.
I feel sweat budding on my forehead from the humidity, and I choose to go for the stairs. I turn left and walk the length of the room. Up I climb, step by step to the layer above me.
Step by step.
I reach the top and see a bridge to my left, likewise made of the same white tile. I choose to cross it. There are no railings for me to hold, so I am a little more cautious in my steps.
The bridge carries me over an enormous pool. A huge, blue body of water, and I peer over the edge for a better look.
In the centre of this pool is a pedestal of white tile, and atop it is a sculpture. A large white sphere, with a crack in its side.
A small flicker of anxiety shivers through me. I am familiar with this sculpture. The pool my Dad and I visited all the time had this same one as a feature. I used to stare it. Wonder at its purpose. The original artist probably had no deeper meaning behind it, but back then, as a kid… It enthralled me.
The memories resurface, once long-forgotten.
…Why? Why did I obsess so much over this sculpture?
I’m not sure why. Maybe because it just seemed so out of place.
I pause on the bridge and rub a hand against my forehead. I take a second to try and work out what is happening, or rather, if I should try harder to work out what is happening. The problem is, I’ve kind of decided that my current state of calm rests precariously on a tightrope. I’m concerned that if I dedicate too much thought to my situation and come to grips with its impossibility then I will simply start to panic…
…
My Dad used to take me to the pool after school on Fridays. It was fun. We’d spend a few hours there having a good time. There were some slides. A diving-board, though, I was too young to use it of course. There was a bubble-pool, and a little lazy-river… It all felt enormous to me, back then, but I’m sure that if I were to return as an adult I would find it far, far smaller than my memory would suggest.
I was always a bit afraid of the lifeguards, though. Those silent, staring sentinels. I was terrified they’d blow their whistles at me. That I’d be publicly called out for doing something wrong. Ejected from the pool, even. Banned.
…Who knows. The mind of a kid works in curious ways.
And I was always anxious about the deep end of the ‘dark’ pool. The pool with the lowest levels of light, compared to the others. A dolphin drawn in coloured tile shimmered perpetually at the bottom of the deep end, and whilst I’m sure it was designed to be charming, it always creeped me the hell out. I hated the idea that there was something below me. Something beneath, down there in the deep… and through the distorted water and the flickering lights, the dolphin’s appearance came across as unsettling. Ever-shifting. Dreamlike and disturbing.
I hated it.
I would only ever go in that particular pool if my Dad was right by my side, and even then I would always avoid the deep end altogether.
…
I continue across the bridge, heading through an arch into a circular room with a narrow, also circular pool in its very centre. I walk to the edge and look down.
The pool is incredibly, impossibly deep. The water is crystal clear and yet, I still cannot see the bottom. It fades away into blurry, deep darkness. I wonder at the purpose of such a pool, and cautiously turn to study the rest of the room.
There are a series of slides built into the wall. Hard plastic tunnels, leading away into the unknown.
Seven, in total.
Five of them are blue. One of them is white, and one of them is black. Water flows down them in a constant, quiet stream. Inviting me to go and launch myself down, I suppose. To drop myself into the darkness and allow the tunnels to take me into the unknown. Carrying me around and around, throwing me from the left to the right in the total absence of light… leading to God knows where.
…I won’t be doing that, of course. I have no idea what kind of environment such slides might eventually spit me out into.
…If indeed, they ever spit me out at all.
I grimace and rub my hands across my eyes.
I don’t know where I’m going.
I don’t know where I am.
I don’t know what to do.
Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
The architecture makes no sense. None of it makes any sense.
“Hello?” I call out. Then, louder:
“HELLO! IS ANYONE THERE? CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?”
But I receive no reply. My words echo off the tile. I grimace and set off again, passing between two slides and through the only other doorway in the room. Another arch, and it leads me into a grand, wide hall lined with white-tiled pillars. There are shower-head faucets on the wall here to my left, but there is no apparent way to turn them on. There are no dials or handles or buttons. The faucets themselves are also much higher up than the wall than they need to be, to the point where their supposed practicality would be severely limited.
Above the shower-heads are windows in the tile.
These windows have been made out of blue, frosted glass. Light comes from behind these windows, but I cannot see anything tangible. Just a blurred ,watery shine.
The floor descends. Four steps down I go and into the water. It only comes up to my ankles though, and I splash through it as I pass between the white-tiled walls. A doorway to my left. Ascending staircase just beyond… and a corner leading round to the right.
I don’t suppose it matters where I go. I follow the corner leading around to the right, and am met with a long, gloomy passageway. The sound of gently sloshing water is the only sound, echoing ethereally against the tile. The light reflects in the water, and this shimmering light in turn reflects against the corridor’s ceiling, giving the whole corridor an especially dreamlike quality.
Down I go, step after step, my feet making miniscule splashes as I walk between the walls.
The lights overhead are pale and yellow, and they flicker, almost but not quite in time to my steps.
I clear my throat, the muscles in my neck twitching with anxiety. The sound I make travels far in both directions.
I pass by an arch. The corridor leads into a wider room. Stairs descend. Stairs ascend.
Corridors. Arches. Stairs. Rooms. Water.
Corridors. Arches. Stairs. Rooms. Water.
Jesus Christ.
I walk the corridor for a long time. A long, long time, but at last it finally opens up onto another bridge. Swirling steams and mists surround me, but to my right and just about visible is another series of blue-glass windows, though the steam obscures what they might be built into.
I glance over the bridge’s edge; I try to work out how high up I am, but I am unable. I cannot tell how far such a fall might be, were I to slip off the side.
With wet and slippery feet, I take very careful steps across this bridge, as like everything else, it is comprised of that exact same smooth tile.
“Why isn’t he happy?” comes a sudden voice. Crackling, distorted, as if played through an old and broken speaker, unseen.
I freeze at once; a sharp, icy shard striking into my blood. My heart defrosts after a second or two, pumping all the harder, desperate to send its warmth out and into my veins.
Did I imagine it? Am I making stuff up now?
Movement draws my attention and I look around to my right.
Through the steam and the blur of the thick blue glass, I see a small collection of shadowy silhouettes. Gently, slowly milling from place to place.
The voice comes again.
“I don’t understand. He should be happier”.
I decide to move a little faster. Hurriedly I begin to pace my way across the rest of bridge, though this damned humid fog prevents me from seeing how much further I have to go.
My instincts just really don’t want me hanging around.
I swallow and try to control my breathing through my nose, one of my feet slipping suddenly out across the surface of the tile.
I suck some air in through my teeth and stumble right up to the edge, throwing out my arms to rebalance and to prevent myself from toppling into the unknown.
Maybe the slides would have led me down there, I cannot help but wonder idly.
…No, I decide. No probably not. It’s light in here, if dim and distorted and hazy.
The slides, however… The slides led only to darkness, I’m sure of it.
I shoot another look to the frosted blue glass.
The dark and shadowy silhouettes blur together as they shift around. It is hard to tell where one ends and the others begin.
“H-Hello?” I call out to them, my voice catching in my throat. I try again. “Hello!”
The silhouettes makes no sign that they can hear me.
“Our thinking is flawed. We’ve made a mistake, perhaps.”
“Are we missing his fears?”
For some reason this last line in particular strikes a grim chord, and I leave my feeble attempts to communicate behind. I continue hastily along the bridge, putting one foot flat and measured in front of the other, over and over.
…The bridge, as it would seem, is a long one.
Come on, come on… Fuck’s sake…
Well the bridge does come to an eventual end. A drift of chlorine-scented steam wafts up from below, and the air around me goes cold. Not unpleasantly so, just… crisp.
A memory returns to the forefront of my mind. Clear and sharp.
I am with my father. The pool we frequented… There was an outdoor section connected to the main building, you could swim right out to it through an arch in the wall. I can see it now, in my mind’s eye. The surrounding trees, the walkways… and the ever-present steam, rising up from the water and into the cool, Fall air.
I rub the sides of my forehead, looking down at the view before me. Comparing it to my memory.
There was a slide in this outdoor section of open-air pool. Hard plastic, of course, but designed to look like carved marble. Tucked somewhat out of the way, the thing bubbled and frothed with ever-present rapids, and led its rider way down into another pool, further off to the side.
It always frightened me, this particular slide. I had this fear that upon reaching the bottom, the rapids and the froth would suck me right under the water. I wouldn’t be able to get out. Someone else would come down the slide, and unable to see me would kick me, and I’d be battered and lost, and drowned.
A morbid thought for a kid to have, and of course, a wholly irrational one.
But as I said before, the mind of a child works in weird ways. What do they know of rationality?
Steam wafts up from below. The world around me is one of pure fog. Thick, cloud-like mist. The air above is a bright and seemingly natural light, though I cannot see its source.
Before me is the end of the bridge. It curls up a little on either side, and becomes the exact same slide as the one from my memories.
Longer, though. Far longer. Down it descends, through the cloud and the fog, and I cannot see the bottom.
Water rushes from vents in the bridge’s sides, providing a bubbling, ongoing stream down the slide.
I tug at my shirt. Unsure what to do. I look behind me.
Those things behind the glass… Were they people? They’re watching me though, right? Am I the one they’re talking about?
It’s clear that I’m supposed to go down this slide.
I fidget in place.
I close my eyes.
Wake up, I tell myself. Just wake up, Adrian.
Not of this real. It can’t be. It just can’t be. So WAKE UP.
“He needs a push”, comes the voice, drifting through the fog. I feel a breeze against my skin, a breeze that rises into a wind, rippling back my hair. I am washed in alternating temperatures, battling for control. The cool, cold air of the wind, and the warm, clammy heat from below.
…And I hear the sound of something on the bridge.
I open my eyes and wheel around, staring.
The sound is like a ripple… Like a rush of water… Rising and falling, rising and falling. And between the rush is the sound of… of what, footsteps? Something striking against the bridge, repetitively.
Approaching.
I glance up to the world above me, but the light dims.
The sound a whistle, shrill and sharp cuts painfully through the steam.
Terror strikes. I don’t know what is coming after me, exactly, but I can’t stay here.
So I clench my jaw. I swear aloud and send out a prayer that I might yet awaken, and down I go. I crouch, and push myself over the edge of the slide. I am caught in its embrace at once, my stomach drops, and the wind only rushes harder and faster against my face, water flickering and splashing up at me as I tear through the mists.
“Please, please let me be okay”, I mutter through my gritted teeth as the slide carries me down; down, down, down.
The sound of the whistling is lost above and behind me to the roar of the wind.
A thought strikes its way into my brain. A thought that this slide, despite its differing appearance, might match my hypothesis on the others. The other slides. Those horrible, dark tunnels.
…My hypothesis that at least some of them might be unending.
What if the slides never ends?
…Ever?
It is just as I am beginning to truly contemplate this horror when I am bluntly and suddenly proven wrong.
I see water below me. Frothing, churning, steaming water. Rising up like a wave towards me. I shield my face and take a breath, and down I go, slamming into it hard and puncturing its surface, the rush of the winds replaced by a dull, gentle bubbling of the water. I open my eyes and try to immediately swim to the surface, battling a current that seeks to pull me under.
It isn’t strong enough. I can beat it. I can beat it.
And beat it I do, returning to the world of the air and allowing a deep, shuddering breath.
I blink and take in my surroundings as I tread water.
The mist has repealed a little, but I still can’t see very much. I turn to look behind me and see the end of the slide, still sending down an endless waterfall, frothing up the water below it.
There is nowhere for me to rest, and nothing to rest on, so I have no choice but to swim, for now.
Swimming is my only option.
So I put out my arms and carry myself through the water, putting the end of the slide behind me and swimming away in the opposite direction.
There’s a faint, slightly differing light source a little ways out ahead. A glimmer of blue through the pale half-white of the mists, and this is what I head towards.
I swim, the only sound the ripple of my movements through the water, and the steadily fading sound of the base of the slide.
It’s about three or four minutes into my little venture when I see the first corpse.
I cannot help but scream aloud in fright as it drifts into view. Face-down in the water, floating. Sharks across their swim shorts. Blue Hawaiian shirt.
A floating corpse.
I increase my pace, heart hammering.
Keep your breathing steady. You don’t want to drown here, do you?
The second drifts into view from my right. Same outfit. Likewise, face-down.
A sob tries to force its way out of me, but I disallow it. Pushing myself onwards.
Swimming past a third, and a fourth.
All face-down.
One of them nudges against me, drifting lazily on its meandering course. I wince and thrust my arms through the water, pushing the body away.
A part of me wants to try to help them. To flip them over and to see what, if anything, can be done.
Another part knows that there is simply no point. There’s nothing I can do here, it’s too late.
…And another part still dares not even try. Too afraid of what I might see if I were to turn a body over and look upon its face.
So onwards I go.
Swimming towards the light.
Just as my arms and legs are beginning to tire, I come across a small platform. A white-tiled square, no larger than a few feet across, and bordered by a low metal rail. I dip my head beneath the water, opening my eyes to see how the platform is attached. To see exactly how its connected to the world around me.
Surely it cannot be floating, I think to myself, since the material of the platform’s base is hard and dense.
I regret my decision to look beneath the surface at once.
There is nothing beneath the platform. It does indeed float, holding itself impossibly in place in the water.
I see my arms out before me, slowly treading.
And beyond them is nothing.
Just endless deep. The cool blue of the water, descending down into gradual darkness, and its soft murmuring in my ears. I have no idea how far down the water might go.
I lift my head back up into the air and reach out a hand for the rail, clambering up and onto the platform, easing myself over and taking a seat in the very centre, arms huddled around my knees, dripping and leaking from my clothes onto the tile.
I take a second to consider my surroundings.
Mist.
Pale, white, mist.
The lone blue of the light I was following seems brighter now. I must be closer. But there are no other structures currently visible to me.
Just this platform, the mist, and through it, the corpses. Drifting around me. I count five of them, now.
I watch one pass me by.
Slowly, aimlessly.
Where did they all come from? Who would do something like this? Are they even real?
The filters hiss.
The water ripples.
And a shiver of goosebumps runs, quite unprompted, up the back of my neck.
The sensation that I am being watched increases tenfold and I shoot an anxious glance over my shoulder.
I put a hand on the rail before me and clamber to my feet, looking out over the face of the water.
What I see there, is a shadow.
Not like the ones behind the frosted glass, this one is different.
Larger.
Far, far larger.
It distorts the blue of the water. Makes it darker. It disturbs the surface and gentle, almost imperceptible rolls and waves are sent out as it eases its way through the depths below.
My knuckles whiten against the rail as the closest corpse to the shadow’s location is carefully, gently dragged beneath the surface. The body begins to fold in the middle, and is then slowly and quietly hauled under the water. The corpse’s foot is the last thing I see before it vanishes beneath, shadowing as it descends, before becoming lost to the blue entirely.
A bubble rises up and pops as it makes contact with the air.
I lose sight of the great shadow and I begin to look all around me, frantically.
Another corpse is dragged beneath.
It too sends up a bubble of air as it vanishes in to the shadows.
A third corpse is taken. And then, another. And another.
One by one, all taken down into the depths.
Taken, until there is only me. Alone on this little platform as the shadow disappears once again. Vanishing into the blue, directly beneath.
My heart hammers, the mists drift lazily through the air, and below me, the water ripples. Shifting and churning, in quiet waiting.
[1/2]