A group of people, a friend, and I all bike up a tall mountain together. The ground is solid rock covered in a thin layer of sand, the wind making it look like we are biking on top of the waves of the ocean. We travel downhill a steady slope for the entire trip but somehow still end up at the top.

The peak of the mountain is surprisingly green and free of snow and plateaus into an overlook. Before the plateau there is a chokepoint making it so we have to walk through one at a time. The bikes disappear once we get off of them.

Everyone goes ahead of my friend and I so we go last with me bringing up the rear. The ground is divoted by the foot traffic and my friend clips one and trips over, face planting. I move forward to help her up but once I step into the narrow pathway I notice a presence watching us. As soon as I take notice It closes in, snaps my friend's neck, and disappears faster than I could see.

I reset back to before.

This time I ignore its presence and instead of my friend it takes the group's guide. The presence then elongates and stretches out to cover the entire group save for us two before collapsing in and forming a purplish-black portal with about a two metre circumference. The portal then rapidly decays away until nothing is left.

No matter how many times I reset and no matter what I tried I never did find a way to get inside the portal.

…

This time I reset all the way back to the beginning, in the living room of our base, sitting on a couch tying up my boots. Everyone else in the world just disappeared one day, leaving us alone in an empty ghost town. I was the only one to see the vanishing happen. I was in the food court of a shopping centre when everyone all of a sudden, for no reason I could discern, imploded into nothingness, leaving all their clothes and possessions to drop to the ground.

I swipe the air in front of my face downwards and a transparent red screen pops up mid air. No one else could see or interact with this when I asked. The screen is filled with boxes and works like an inventory in a video game.

Inside my inventory is two pairs of glasses of similar make but one of them is cracked. The other pair is marked as new and shows the description; ‘Blink in the darkness and sink into the bleakness.’ when touched.

I pull the new glasses out of my inventory and put them on. While I was fiddling with my inventory almost everyone else had already left, my friend waiting for me seated at a table watching me.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

She asks me what’s going to happen, and I tell her, but I can’t let her know about the presence. She shrugs and stands up letting me take the lead. All doors that are connected to enclosed spaces have a unique separate subspace that you have to go through before you can come out the other side. This subspace changes every time the door is opened and closed, and of course the bastards left us behind.

The front door leads into a cramped pitch black tunnel and closes behind us, I use the red glow the inventory gives off as a light to navigate through it. Unfortunately other people can’t see the light it gives off.

Last time we went through this my friend was absolutely terrified and stood unmoving so I grabbed her hand to pull her through, when I grabbed her she screamed like a banshee. Telling all this to her now she smacks the back of my shoulder with a grumble. She’s putting on a false bravado and I can see the undercurrent of worry she still has. She has a fear of dark and cramped spaces.

We enter deeper into the tunnel. After a few minutes of terse conversation and walking, strips of light flicker on. The lights run along the edges where the walls and floor meet, they are only bright enough to illuminate the floor and are placed sporadically along the tunnel leaving long gaps of darkness for my friend. Along with the lights, faint carnival music starts playing.

After walking even further in, leaves start flowing along the ground like water from the back end of the tunnel behind us. The first time this happened I had considered going back to get a broom but doors that are used to enter subspaces are impossible to open once they close.

Only I can see the lights and leaves but not see or feel their effects. My friend can’t see them but can see and feel their effects, the lights still light up the tunnel for her and she can feel the leaves.

The constant influx of leaves starts to cover up the lights, darkening the tunnel and further scaring my friend. I tell her that I’m going to lift her up and to not scream. She screams anyway.

I quickly run through the tunnel with my friend in my arms, every step giving off the crunch of a leaf.

Further in we come across a fork in the tunnel, the leaves already up to my thighs. Last time this was the exit, ‘why is it different’ I ask myself. One of the tunnels has strips of lights shining through the gaps of the leaves, but other than that they are identical. “What happened? Why’d we stop?” My friend asks me.

I follow the tunnel with the lights and come across a small circular domed room with seven more branching paths. The leaves are up to my chest at this point and while they don’t hinder any of my movement as I thought they would, it is getting harder to breathe with each passing second however.

At this point the leaves have covered up any light that could have been given off. I close my eyes and I can see the lights but nothing else. With one eye closed to see the lights and one eye open to see the tunnel I make my way forward.

Even further in we come across an identical domed room with fourteen offshoots this time. My trick still works so I march on, my arms already sore. Walking through the leaves as if they’re not even there, the only drag I feel from them is from my friend in my arms.

We, again, come across an identical domed room. The room has twenty one passages this time.