⚠️ Content Warnings ⤴
Info
Silly Content Warning: Violence against writers.
Serious Content Warning: Highly detailed descriptions of self-hate, self-mutilation, and gore.
You wake up, and you wish you hadn't.
But here you are, awake again in your sleeping bag, in some godforsaken level, hidden away like a rabbit from predators.
With a sigh, you crawl out of your fabric cocoon. Back home, you would have laid in bed for 20 minutes, aimlessly scrolling social media before you felt motivated to get up. But here? Stillness was death. To survive, you needed to pack up your small camp and move on as quickly as possible before things came looking for you.
You change clothes (rotating out shirt, pants, undergarments) in a vain attempt to keep each set you carried with you as clean as possible.
(Even though people's standards for states of dress had grown somewhat lax since noclipping into the Backrooms, most people still associated the stench of body odor with disease. Finding enough safe water to drink, let alone bathe in, was difficult.)
And then, a small breakfast of a protein bar and swig of Almond Water before you set off, exploring the levels of the Backrooms so others could follow in your wake.
This had become your routine for the past five years. Sure, you had "vacations," where you stayed in one place long enough to relax and recover. But inevitably, as soon as you finished, the M.E.G. would call you, asking for your help. You said yes. You always said yes. It was like you didn't know the meaning of the word "no." It wasn't like the pay was great. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. But most of all, you wanted to be helpful, wanted to repay those who came before you, gave you a lifeline so you could live another day and hopefully survive.
But we all have our limits. Every favor they asked of you, every corporate smile they gave you, every inane "team-bonding" exercise you did built the resentment bit by bit. Who knew that even life and death situations could become painfully, numbingly mundane.
As you walk through the level, notebook in hand (paper was more reliable these days), and take notes about the surroundings, you idly scratch a scab on the back of your neck. This level is certainly a level of all time. Another, nondescript, plain, boring, predictable, soulless, pointless, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, STUPID STUPID STUPID—
Oh. You didn't mean to write that. You cross it out and take a swig of Almond Water, feeling it slide down your throat, the faintest taste of almonds left on your tongue, hearing it splash softly in your stomach, your stomach gurgling as sustenance hits it, and feel the nothingness ebb away your sudden burst of rage. You let out a sigh, and push away the resentment, the rage, until you feel nothing. You glance at what you wrote, and you tear the page out (no need to have one of the M.E.G. therapists on your case again). Starting again, you write:
Level [placeholder] is an underground parking garage. There are fluorescent lights, elevators that potentially lead to other floors, storage spaces cordoned off with chainlink fences, and the occasional monster entity sound. [figure out something better later] [also see what kind of monster entity is around]
You pull out your smartphone, glance around, and snap a quick picture of one of the chainlink storage spaces.
It's not your best work, but whatever. It'll do. Whoever reads your article will get the jist of it. Concrete, lights, chain link fences. You idly itch the scab on the back of your neck.
"Remember," you remembered the editor at the M.E.G. saying over your last article, "You need to document everything you do. It could be the difference between life and death."
You write:
Chainlink fences good sleeping places. [fix later]
You wander around a bit. Looking to see if there are supplies behind the fences (there are) and if the elevators work (Kinda. they take you to the same floor regardless of what button you push). You jot that down too. You haven't caught sight of what was making the noises far from you, so you scribble that down as "potential incorporeal entities… or hallucinations."
Now the hard part: finding the exit.
You idly itch the scab on the back of your neck, and you feel a slight sting as it comes away beneath your fingernail. Unfortunate. You went too far. You're bleeding now.
You flick the scab away and put pressure on the back of the neck, feeling the blood ever so slightly pushing against your fingertip. You've forgotten where this one came from. Bug bite? Scratch? Pimple you popped? Does it really matter? It's another injury on the job, a minor one. One so small no one cares but you, and even then, you don't have the energy to care. Just another mild annoyance to add to the pile.
You lick your finger, wiping the blood away with your tongue, tasting the iron, swallowing a bit of yourself, and then put pressure on your neck again. Not the most hygienic, but it should help the bleeding stop.
You go back to looking for the exit in the tried and true way: touching everything in sight until you get the "buzzy feeling" and then run into it, hoping it actually wasn't a solid wall. You bet you look pretty weird, a person just ambling along, one hand with a finger pressed to a small, bleeding wound, and another hand wildly touching everything as if you were an unsupervised toddler.
But you find the exit (it was within a chainlink fence) and jot that down. You've done everything you need, with the exception of identifying whatever might be in with you (if it's not a hallucination), so unfortunately, it's time to start on the draft. You find a storage area with some chairs and desks, pull some out, and drop your notebook on the desk.
You stare at the page, pen hovering just above the paper, but nothing comes. You just can't bring yourself to care enough to properly write. But if you don't, you won't get paid. So you have to. You have to.
You grind your teeth against themselves, and take another swig of Almond Water to clear your mind, but still. You can't. You can't.
With a scream, you hurl the notebook and pen and grab the desk and throw that against the the chainlink fence. You scream again, until you have no more to give, and destroy as much as you can around you, clawing and kicking and thrashing around, a caged animal with nowhere to go.
Is this your life? Is this really what you want? Can you even do anything else at this point? You might have locked yourself into this life. Everyone would look at your history, how many levels you survived, how many places you've found, how many people you've saved, and you can just hear them saying, "You wanted to be useful, and you're good at this. Who else can do it?"
You never asked for this.
You never wanted this.
You didn't want to do this anymore.
A crying laugh bubbles out of your throat despite the numbing effects of the Almond Water. Maybe you need more, so you unscrew the cap and drink one sip, then two sips. A third sip. You down the whole bottle. With each gulp, you feel your emotions dulled, almost erased, and yet— and yet—
You don't want to be this kind of animal anymore.
You giggle, tears prickling in the corners of your eyes. Is that the truth then? Is that what you've been hiding from yourself? You sink to your knees, dropping the empty bottle. It clangs against the concrete, ringing and hollow. You press your palms against your face, and let the tears and laughter and sobs and screams come out.
You're so tired of having to care. Fuck the M.E.G., fuck this place, and fuck you for even caring in the first place! No one cares what you did. You are just another cog in the machine, another wandering soul desperate for a purpose, but it all comes down to nothing. No one's going to read this shit. No one's going to read the slop you've put hours and hours into. No one cares about another stupid parking lot, another stupid fucking level, another stupid— fucking— WRITER!
You are hollow and numb and yet so free at the same time.
You drag your hands through your hair, relishing in the way your nails catch on imperfections in your scalp. Your hands rest on you neck where you feel where you picked at your skin.
You aren't sad.
You aren't happy.
You are numb.
You don't want to be this kind of animal anymore. You don't want to be human anymore. No more suffering. No more worrying. Just… numbness.
You dig at the scab, feeling blood ooze from the wound, feeling it widen and deepen. It felt good. Right, even. You scrape away your flesh from the back of your head, releasing a pressure you didn't even know you had.
But it's not enough. Further, further, you drive your nails in. You pull and tear and dig and dig and dig, blood from your neck going from drips to a steady stream. But finally, the hole was big enough for a finger to get through.
You are able to hook you finger underneath your skin, feeling the border where skin becomes muscle, and you slide your nail between it. You smile and pull.
Like two slices of jello being pulled apart, you separate your skin from your muscle. It hurts, oh it hurts, but you laugh at the sensation, revel in the pain. You pull and pull, and finally, you can fit both hands beneath your skin, cementing your conquest over your flesh. You will be free from this prison.
You hook a flap to the top of the chainlink fence, and push forward with your body, straining against your skin, pulling it off where you can't reach. Finally, your whole neck is free.
Then, your back.
Your arms. Your legs. Your feet. Your hands. All of you adorned in glorious, glistening, shining red.
You go back to your neck and feel your face. Your fingers travel against your lips, leaving a trail of blood against them. They move up to your nose, gently feeling the tip of it. They brush against your eyelashes and eyelids. And finally, one last touch of your hair, one final run-through from your fingers, one final good-bye, until they come to rest at the base of your skull.
With a final tug, you rip your face off, howling as your eyelids get ripped from your skull, crying tears of blood, laughing as your lips are ripped from your mouth. But finally, as your skull slides away from your scalp with a juicy, delicious, squelch, you are free.
You laugh, gurgling and joyful, and you fling your old face away from you. Your muscles ripple, reacting to the air flowing over them. You take one staggered step. Then another, this time more steady, leaving bloody foot prints in your wake.
And you smile.
Oh how you smile as you pull yourself out from the storage area, watching your old skin waving slightly from the movement in the chainlink fence, a pool of blood forming from where it hung.
You are free.
You are newborn.
You need no purpose. You are emptier than ever.
You are despair.