I wake up with the sun in my eyes. Which shouldn’t be possible by any account.
My apartment is cheap, so the only room with sun access is the main living room. My bedroom is as far away as possible from the sun, specifically to prevent this.
I groggily open my eyes to be greeted with an… unfamiliar roof.
‘This is not my apartment.’
The realisation was quite fast, honestly. The roof was a pale peach colour, made of asbestos. How old is this place? Sitting up in the bed I looked around. I appeared to be in a child’s bedroom. The bed still fit because whatever god is cursing me decided to make me 5’10 on a good day. The layout was rectangular, a door at the centre of the wall in front of me. Across the bed from mine was a green bed, with a lot of random plush toys scattered about. The sheets were messy, like someone had rushed out of them. The carpet was a yellowy colour, and I could’ve sworn there was some mould at the edges. My bed was blue, the sheets having a cartoon character patterned across it. I look around and-
‘Is that Wumby?’
Wumby is my childhood plushie my parents got after they didn’t let me keep a stray. It was a bulbous little thing, vaguely cat like and extremely round. It barely reached the middle of my torso. I mean, it is a big plushie, but I swore it was much bigger when I was younger. Or maybe I was just small. I give it a few test squeezes and confirm that it is in fact my childhood plush Wumby. I thought I lost it when I moved!
‘Wait.’
Blue sheets? Wumby on my bed? This is my room. This is the room my childhood home. What the fuck? I look and see-
Oh. That’s my sister’s bed. No wonder I thought this place was familiar. I have lived here before. I lived here for 16 years of my life.
Not like I have many good memories of this place anymore.
Putting Wumby in his rightful place at the head of the bed, as is his right as sole ruler of the cushions, I slip out of the bed. This place is so… familiar. How is this possible? I went to sleep in my apartment, and I’m still wearing my jammies, consisting of an oversized t-shirt and sweatpants, so what gives?
Wait, am I sleeping?
“Ow.”
A quick pinch reveals I am in fact not dreaming. What.
I turn to the window that woke me up in the first place. I do not see the expected suburban neighbourhood, however, and instead am met with a white nothing.
‘???’
It’s hard to describe. Like looking into a white void?
It was emitting the light like there was a sun behind it. I go to unlatch the windows and figure out what the white void is and am promptly stopped by the fact the window isn’t opening. The latch doesn’t even disconnect. What the hell have I gotten myself into?
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Walking to the door, habit of walking on the balls of my feet ingrained into me, and it opens! I’m met with the rest of the house. Looking down from the top floor, I am hit with a wave of nostalgia. It’s so… strange. It’s exactly like I remember it was. High ceilings fitting of an upper middle-class house. A disco ball hangs from the ceiling. Why is there a disco ball. Whatever.
Considering the window was locked… is the front door frozen shut? I walk down the stairs. Memories of a much older time hit me in waves. Having dinner as a family at the table, the Christmas tree that my dad swore we had to cut down manually. He was always weird about those cultural things. Ma shouting at him about “reasonable pricing”. She was always money minded. I snicker.
A memory of my sister, playing with her-
‘No.’
I let the memory leave me. The past is the past.
Holy shit is that a DJ booth? Wait, this is my sweet sixteen! The house is set to the time of my sweet sixteen! I… don’t know how to feel about that honestly. I look at the ‘Happy Birthday’ banner my dad hung up with assistance from a step stool. It was mantled above the fireplace.
The fireplace wasn’t lit.
I reach the front door after musing on the past. Because whoever is doing this clearly knows me well. And that means they know I do not like my sixteenth birthday. That makes this entire thing in poor taste. I go to open it and-
Almost step foot first into nothing. An infinite blackness completely surrounds the house. The wind howls in my ears threatening to blow me out into the abyss in front of me. And I am scared.
I close the door. Extremely quickly.
“I… am never doing that again.”
In fact, I deadbolt the door, lock it with the manual lock, grab a chair and put it in front of the door. That is now restricted land, and I am not touching it ever again.
Well. Since my first escapade into my new circumstances almost send me into the void that is outside apparently, time to figure out what’s going on.
⌂
It’s been a few days since the door incident, and I’ve finally gotten some idea of how this place works. All of the clocks and calendars are stuck on the same time, but it appears to run on a 24-hour schedule, with a hard shift every 12 hours from day to night. When the time shifts to “night”, all of the windows go black like the void outside and all of the important lights in the house turn on. 12 more hours pass, and it all reverts to how it was when I woke up. Including all of the items. Except Wumby, but I do not want to know why that is.
That means the pantry restocks itself every 24 hours which is extremely convenient. They don’t move from where they are unless I completely eat and or destroy it, in which case they end up back in the pantry on the next reset. There's a half-eaten chocolate cake on the table that magically returns to its 5/8’s state every “reset”. Or is it a restock? What is the actual terminology for when the magical void house you wake up in has completely reverted to zero? Questions for later, I guess.
Honestly, The House (because I do not know what else to call it, and I think it deserves a name) is pretty chill to live in. No rent obligations, free food, infinite water, and a fully specced out DJ booth. Honestly the main issue so far is finding stuff to do between waking up and going to bed. Currently I’m trying to figure out how to operate the disco ball in the living room using nothing but the half-ripped instructions and frantic googling on the internet. Did I mention the internet? I can’t like, talk to anyone on it. But the family PC basically has the entire internet downloaded onto it. The only issue is the fact that the internet in question is the one from 8 years ago. 2016, year of… I can’t remember.
CLANG
What was that.
I whip my head towards where the sound came from-
‘The front door.’
The sound was the noise of a man in full plate armour colliding with the chair that is now on the ground. The deadbolt got ripped off and sent to who knows where.
The door promptly closes by itself.
‘What the fuck.’
And to think I was starting to like this house.
⌂