Offsets
Offset 0
Name: Death of a Wanderer
Offset 1
Name: An Unlikely Reprieve
Offset 2
Name: A Demonstration of Nonviolence
Offset 3
Name: The Complexities of Retribution
Offset 4
Name: Abruptly Ended Respite
Offset 5
Name: An Entity of Interest
Offset 6
Name: Record Straightening
⚠️ Content Warnings ⤴
Info
Content Warning
This article contains large amounts of violence, blood, gore, and depictions of terrorism in a negative light — reader discretion is advised.
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moved out of submissions by
Positive123
Prologue
Death of a Wanderer
Reggie Lawson is about to die.
While this is individually important to them, it would hardly be a subscripted footnote of a footnote on the gigantic ledger of Backrooms history. People died all the time down here, whether from malnutrition, environmental hazards, or even each other — but Reggie's death, the same as their life, was many times more insubstantial than most.
They were, or was, a somewhat average person. They went through childhood as a pretty normal child, getting average grades in average courses, all while living in an average town, doing average recreational activities at each age. Up until they walked through solid matter into the Backrooms, they were a pretty normal adult, slaving away at some vague office job, before going home to an average apartment, eating average meals in between.
They weren't a paragon of morality either; they had done many wrong things throughout their average life, as did everyone.
Above all, they didn't deserve what horror was about to happen to them — although that could be said about any human, even some of the worst vessels of evil.
Reggie waded through the knee-high water, their damp clothes sucking at them as they moved. They likely should have been more careful in Level 134. It was now common knowledge that the SS Fun had no-clipped here, but Reggie had thought they were safe, because it was a long way away. Of course, that was before they had splashed through the shallow water around an oxidizing ship and seen the yellow, bloodstained terror facing them.
Now, as the Partygoer used its sharp mouth-hands to rip into their fragile flesh, they knew regret. Not the kind of regret when you upset a friend or mess up a piece of work — the sort of regret for when you taste death, and know that it was your fault and no one else's.
Bones broke, sinews tore. The deep blue water shifted to red around where Reggie was being slowly disemboweled. The Partygoer was not merely attacking wildly, they realized, but deliberately slashing and tearing in the places that would cause the most agony. Neither did it seem particularly focused on killing them, as it was deliberately avoiding severing limbs or vital organs.
After what seemed like an eternity of exquisite torture, Reggie was flung to the sand of a small dune, the Partygoer wandering off — having done it's worst — after another victim. Fortunately (or possibly unfortunately), Reggie still clung to life.
They tried to get up, to try and find help, but found they couldn't move their wrecked body. Reggie stared at their arm from where it had been dropped, and saw it bulging, blue pustules making it look like a pool noodle with bad acne.
They passed out, which turned out to be a relief.
But it refused to become one of them.
The malformed Phobic Centipede curled into itself, not wanting to hear the voices.
It did not laugh with the hivemind.
And so it was thrust out.
An anomaly, isolated.
Reggie awakened back into the world of pain and suffering. Everything was still in anguish, just like when they left - it hadn't even lessened slightly, although the rest meant they could cope with it slightly better. They still couldn't move, and the disgusting scabs on their arms seemed to be forming together into cohesive skin now.
Something shifted across their immovable field of view. Reggie tried to focus on the blue shape, but it was hard when most of their nerves didn't seem to be under their direct control.
Something spoke in their head.
'Oh dear, another one joining us.'
It sounded like the voices in their sleep, but closer.
'I am sorry for what's happened to you, but you were lucky. You could have ended up one of them.'
The indistinct figure seemed to glance away from the not-quite-a-corpse of Reggie, at something unseen from their point of view, but obviously very important.
'We're going to get you some help now. This may be somewhat painful.'
Reggie tried to respond, but suddenly realized…
They had no mouth.
As they had an entirely still and silent existential crisis, the blue thing started to carefully drag them across the sand.
An inrush of air engulfed them, as they dropped through the glitched patch of sand.
Darkness surrounded them, instantly split by the anti-colour of non-space.