Telling Jessica about everything had more of a spur of the moment thing. I just, I had to. No matter how good she made me feel, or how bad the thought of telling her made me feel, she was my friend. One of my two best friends. I’d been basically ignoring her and pushing her away because… because I’d be leaving back out in an apocalyptic hell scape and who knew what would happen to Jessica or Rick here? Would they disappear? Would the entire world just disappear?

I didn’t know and that had made the entire conversation nerve wracking.

Jessica had listened quietly to everything I’d said, not saying a word. Just staring at me in awe and shock. When I’d gotten to telling her how I’d told Rick… and we’d been trying to get me back outside into reality… the look her face had been terrible. It was a mix of a lot of stuff at once. She looked almost betrayed but it was more like she’d just been told I was trying to escape the matrix to go live on the moon made of easter bunnies. Like I’d actually gone insane.

That look had hurt. But I’d continued anyway.

When I’d finally finished, she didn’t say anything for a while. Just stared out or closed her eyes and thought. When she finally responded though…

“I’m coming with you.”

That was all she’d said. There hadn’t been many words after that. The plan was to meet up with Rick tomorrow and Jessica had seemed like she needed time to digest everything. She’d only arrived a little earlier than Rick had and it was clear she had been… holding back quite a bit.

“You understand you both are absolutely fucking insane right?” She said, acidicly towards Rick.

We were all currently in a car driving, to the location marked as “The Backrooms” on google maps. That still blew my mind but-

“Why are you so mad at me?!” Rick asked. He was the one currently driving.

“Why? Matt can’t be blamed, he was literally in a week long coma and had hallucinations. You’re the one pushing him on this.”

I wisely chose to stay out of a fight between my girlfriend and best friend.

“Cuz it’s all real of course. You heard him right? That’s way too insane to be false! Besides, if you really didn’t believe him, why did you bring a gun?”

Jessica went silent for a moment at that. Before sighing.

“...Just in case. Look, let’s just go over there, prove that the backroom creepypasta didn’t suddenly come to life, and just move on with our lives please?”

“No can do.” Rick said. “If they aren’t real, we gotta start trying to get Matt to space.”

“Rick!”

“Jessica!”

“Guys.” I finally spoke up. “I don’t think this is…” I trailed off. What was I supposed to say? Both my friends just wanted to help me but… one thought I was absolutely telling the truth, the other thought I had come up with a terrible reality of delusions. Considering even I was starting to doubt that I hadn’t just imagined it all… I didn’t blame Jessica one bit.

“Look, there won’t be any issues!” Rick said. “We’ll just pop in, fall down into the backrooms, fight some horrible monstrosities in a nearly infinite maze of office rooms, and then shove Matt into maybe like, a glowing portal or something. He’ll wake up, kick some major monster ass, and save the real us.”

“Right. Of course. The real us.” Jessica said, deadpan.

“Well, real and fake is kinda vague anyway.” Rick chuckled and something about it sounded distinctly off. I don’t think he was… at ease with things as he appeared. No, he really couldn’t have been. Jessica was way easier off, because she simply didn’t believe a word I’d said. Still, she was coming with and had brought protection just in case. She may not believe me… but she hadn’t denied me or come unprepared.

That was worth it’s weight in gold to me. I my hand in her’s as Rick continued to drive and she gave me a small smile that still nearly drove me crazy. She was… so beautiful. It struck my heart and-

“I swear to god, if you two start making out while I’m driving, I’m pulling over.” Rick said.

I opened my mouth but Jessica beat me to it.

“Cockblock.”

My face turned crimson in a moment.

“Hoho, that’s how you want to play it ey? My dudette, you don’t know who you’re messing with. So, when Matt starts taking-”

“Anyway!” I said quickly. “What’s the actual plan Rick?”

“Dude, it’s really simple. I looked up all the things I could on the backroom.” Rick said as he merged onto the highway. “Basically, it’s just a maze of beige nonsense with monsters. There’s a lot more lore on it… and hopefully we won’t run into any of it. If this whole world really is the connected subconscious of everyone it should just be the original stuff… hopefully.”

“And if it’s not?” I asked.

“Hehe. Then I don’t think the week of food I brought and two swords will be enough…” Rick patted the absolutely massive travelers backpack he’d brought with him. It was stuffed to the gills with things.

“Or,” Jessica said, shaking her head. “We get to what is clearly just an office building, find nothing, and go home. Maybe get Matt a therapist.”

“Come on dude, we’re planning for the worst here. So, we get into the backrooms and that’s where the real challenge begins. I have no idea what monsters will be there. But they’ll probably be only mildly fast and most seem to just be a bundle of cables. And I’ve also got a bunch of things for help navigating mazes. I even watched a whole video on it! We’ll be just fine and right as rain in no time.”

“You two are insane…” Jessica said, shaking her head.

The rest of the trip was mostly in silence. Not awkward silence though, Jessica may feel like I’d become a crazy person but we were all still friends and I don’t think the ‘friend was in a coma for a week’ trauma had passed yet. I tried to imagine myself in their shoes. If Jessica or Rick woke up after a week and told me all of this. Strangely… I felt like I’d believe Rick and not Jessica. Looking more into that, I smiled bitterly to myself.

Rick going back out to the apocalypse world… I fully believed he’d survive somehow and kick some major ass. Even now, after I’d been stuck in here for almost a week, I still believed he was fine.

But Jessica… my heart clenched in worry. I didn’t exactly doubt she could survive but… I just… loved her differently. For Rick, the thought of losing him barely crossed my mind. But with Jessica, it was like it blaring, right there in my face. I didn’t quite like that about myself but… love was painful like that sometimes. It wasn’t really logical.

Jessica was tense though. Her eyes kept glancing down at her gun. She had, after all, basically stolen it from her father. I knew she’d been to the range a few times and had worked guns before but… not any time recently.

It was almost a relief for her when we finally got to where we were going. It was the dead of night and the “Backrooms”, the location we were heading was… well… an office building. It was clearly some kind of call center maybe and there didn’t seem to be anyone there.

“Alright, we’re actually here. Time to do this thing.”

We all got out, Rick hefting the massive pack on his back, and headed for the door. It was locked of course. Rick had a solution for that, namely, a lockpicking kit he’d literally bought yesterday.

“There is absolutely no way you know how to use that.” Jessica said.

“Jeez, you sound just like Matt sometimes. Just give me a moment, I watched a video on this!”

“I really don’t think-” I began.

“It was from the lockpickinglawyer!”

“Oh. Wow. Alright, maybe you actually can do this. Did he actually make a video on door locks though?”

“Sure did. Now quiet, I need to focus for a minute dude.”

Jessica just sighed and crossed her arms. Sure enough, not five minutes later, the door was open.

“See? Told you I could do it.” Rick said, smiling smugly at Jessica.

“Yes yes, you’ve committed a crime and we’re about to commit more. My dad would be beating my ass if he knew. So let’s please hurry up before any silent alarms start going off and a security guard catches us.”

At that, we started moving quickly. The office building was just an office building, nothing really special about it. Most importantly though… it wasn’t beige. It was standard boring office grey. Which didn’t bode well for us. To be honest… I guess part of me started giving up. No, most of me wanted to give up. Here, I had Rick, Jessica, and even my dog Spot who I had to leave with a friendly neighbor. That had fucking sucked. And it was only going to get worse.

What if I really do return? I’d have to deal with monsters again, eternal darkness, and being so alone. Fighting, trying to survive, trying to come up with a proper ‘goal’ and plan so I can be entertaining enough, to accomplish my real goal and plan… that was an utter nightmare. The pain of nearly having my bones ripped out, the coldness of death as my blood poured out of me, the terror as I saw something that should not be… I didn’t want to go back to that. To being a play thing for things that were so far above me that I couldn’t hope to do anything to them.

More than anything… I was hoping I was wrong. That it had all been a dream. That Rick and Jessica and Spot were totally okay and were here with me right here and now. I kept thinking more on that thought. If this all failed, I’d see a therapist. I’d also try and downplay any more of Rick’s attempts. Sooner or later he’d come around to the fact that this was reality and I really had just hallucinated it all. Because even if there was some way out, how many more could there be? I wasn’t going to able to go to space. I wasn’t going to attempt to die and Rick and Jessica weren’t going to let me. Maybe I really should just accept the reality I was in-

“I found it!” Rick shouted, at the very top of his lungs. I blinked and turned, running already. We had spread out just a little and he wasn’t that far but I needed to get to him right now.

When I turned the corner and saw what he saw, I gasped. The rest of the office seemed normal but… there was a single wall. A single beige wall.

“I told you!” Rick said, far happier than I was. “I told you it was real! That we were all fake!”

“Calm down!” Jessica said, unnerved. “L-Look, it’s just a single beige wall. Probably just old wallpaper or something. It doesn’t even look that differently from the walls around it.”

“Mhm. Mhm. Yes, I see but you’re missing the most important part Jess. And that’s that there’s a beige wall here.” Rick said with a smile, giving a thumbs up. I had to resist a chuckle, even as my eyes never left the wall.

There was no way… right? Even more than the whole Game Show being real… Rick being right about the ‘where I was’ and ‘how to get out’ felt utterly insane to me. But it wasn’t like it was absolute proof or anything. I tried to tell myself that anyway. It was, just a wall. Just a-

“Alright, let’s run into it.” Rick said and both my and Jessica’s minds clearly blanked.

“”What?””

“Come on! Everyone says that you gotta either trip or ‘no clip’ into the backrooms. We found an ‘entrance’ and now we gotta no clip. That means running into the wall as fast as possible.”

“You can’t possibly be serious.” Jessica said.

Rick got that gleam his and eyes and his expression smoothed down a bit. He was joking and playing around a bit, but only a bit. Rick was dead serious. He was also stubborn as a mule and I could already see that he would run in without us, just to prove it, if we didn’t go along with him.

“Rick, you’re going to be the death of me. Probably via concussion apparently.” I said.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“At least it might make you look a little better.” Rick said with a wink.

“I think he looks just fine.” Jessica said and I felt my heart speed up again.

“Ew.” Rick said with a smile. “So, come on, let’s back up and get a running start.”

Despite a million reasons not to, I found myself walking back to where Rick was. Jessica closed her eyes, as if trying to accept the stupidity of the world, rubbed her temples, and then joined us. I didn’t blame her, this was by far the stupidest thing we’d attempted so far to get me back to reality.

“Just so you both know, we can’t back out, so I’m going to run full speed into that wall.”

“Okay?” I asked.

“And I would feel absolutely betrayed by my best friends if they didn’t do so as well.”

“Fine, yes, we’re going to all knock ourselves out on a wall you slave driver. Let’s just hurry up.” Jessica said pointedly and it only occurred to me now that she had been far more angry today than was normal for her. On the other, everything was pretty stressful.

I stared at the wall and realized her stress might just be the possible broken bones we might have in the next five seconds. Rick began to count down.

“Three.”

“Two.”

“ONE!”

Feeling like an absolute fool, I followed after Rick, running as fast as I could for the wall. It got closer and closer and on instinct, I tried to stop before slamming into it. But there wasn’t enough time or traction to slow down and I felt myself hitting it-

I stumbled, tripped, and went end over end. I heard two crashes and groans nearby, joining my own.

“Owww.” I said, getting up and-

I swallowed thickly, feeling like the entire universe was crashing before me. Like my mind was petering out. Like reality had lost all it’s meaning to me.

I was no longer in an office building. All around me was beige walls.

It was real. All of it was real! The apocalypse, the Gods, the system, the Qi, the Game Show itself. It was all real. It had all happened. The real Rick and Jessica were out there fighting for their very lives, Spot was stuck in a small cage who knows where, being treated who knows how, while I was probably being eaten in some random hospital. It had all… actually happened! I’d really been trapped in a dream world.

Relief was in short supply. Actually, none was to be coming at all. Only horror and fear. I’d been here for… a week. A week where I’d probably been dying. Where I abandoned my friends and my dog. And on the other side was a horrific hell scape I’d have to survive to get anywhere. Tears of frustration threatened to escape. I… I wanted the world to be real so bad. To have things make sense. To go back home. But no. No. I wouldn’t get that. I would have to fight and survive, and worse, thrive and be entertaining to some higher beings so that I could save everyone. Hell, just so I could save myself.

“Whoa!” Rick said, finally getting up and looking around. He began to walk around, mesmerized. “I knew you were telling the truth… but this is insane. Seeing really is believing my dude. Do you have any idea how amazing this is? It’s like magic except creepy.”

However… Jessica was…

“I’m not real.” She immediately said, staring at the walls. “I-I-I’m not real. None of it was real. Nothing is real.” She had gone as pale as ghost, staring at the walls in absolute fear.

Not fear of the walls themselves… but what they meant. She was having an existential crisis.

“Jessica it’s okay, it’s-”

“I’m not real Matt! None of this is okay! I-I-I- Oh my god. I’m not real. I don’t exist.I’m just, a, a, figment of your imagination. Oh my god.”

My eyes shook and I had no idea what to say. I hadn’t planned on how to deal with this at all, I was only a normal person. I never imagined I’d have to comfort my girlfriend as she broke down.

“Guys.” Rick called out but we were busy.

“Jessica, it’s okay. You’re still here. You’re real. Just… different.” My word were lame, false, and weak but I had almost nothing I could say. What was I even supposed to say in this situation?!

“Matt…” Jessica stared at me with such a hollow expression that it was heart breaking. “I’m not real. Only you are and… oh my god. You’re going back to an apocalypse. With, with monsters and the real me is out there dying and, and. There are Gods Matt! Actual evil Gods! This, this.”

It was all hitting her like a truck and I had never felt more impotent in my entire life. I wanted to comfort but how was I supposed to do that? I… I… knew they weren’t real but what did that matter? They were there for me, they were helping me, they were still Rick and Jessica. But my heart shuddered because… I didn’t know what would happen when I left. Would they die? Disappear? Did they never really exist at all? It horrified me in a way that send cold sweat falling down my back.

“Guys!” Rick called out.

“Jessica… I love you. I don’t care if it’s this you or the “real” you or whatever. You’re still Jessica to me. I… I don’t know what I can say but-”

“GUYS! Monster!” Rick yelled and my head whipped to the side, seeing a mass of cables moving at a decent speed towards us. They were normal cables. Thick, black, forming a humanoid creature with sharp legs, a long single line of a torso, and hands that ended in practically spears for fingers. It’s head was a singular black mass of them and literally every single cable part was squirming.

Rick backed away.

Jessica scrambled for her gun.

I ran forward.

Rick had brought two swords with him and strapped them to the backpack. He’d taken it off when we’d tumbled through and now I ran at them. In a motion that was by far more luck than anything else, I pulled out one of them from the sheath.

It was a katana. Rick’s dad was an otaku who collected stuff like this. It was from some show I’d never seen. Maybe Samurai Vack? Either way, it had a black handle and a white blade. My steps didn’t slow down, even as I pulled it out. The Black Skeleton, the Zombies, even the nurse really… they had all beaten a lesson into me, into my heart.

Initiative was king when fighting monsters.

I had never practiced with a sword but a blade was a blade. The creature, the cable monster, swung it’s massive hand of short spears at me, claws so long they’d go through my entire torso twice, but it was slow. Slower than the Black Skeletons had been. I ducked, swinging for it’s mid section. It hit, but this wasn’t the black katana I had relied on. This was a normal blade and these were thick cables. It cut about half way into it, but no more.

I didn’t wait to be skewered. My mind shot fast and another lesson came to my mind. Weight. Strong, fast, durable enemies… but light. That had been the Black Skeletons. Now I used those same harrowing experiences to fight. Another claw sweep, another duck, as I grabbed it by the middle and threw it to the ground.

I was on top of it in seconds, my foot slamming into the blade. Again and again, as fast as I could, until finally I felt and saw it snap in half. Monsters were tedious though. I shouldn’t have needed an old zombie movie and life or death experiences to know this next lesson, but it’s not every day you fight monsters. That last lesson was simple.

Always double tap.

I grabbed my blade and drove it through the ‘head’ of the creature. It tried to still reach up to me, blades getting closer to my body, but I merely pushed down with all my weight.

Something gave.

It fell apart, cables once more just becoming cables.

I sagged and sighed in relief, feeling exhausted. That thing hadn’t been ‘that’ strong but I no longer had any stats to deal with it. The blade had felt heavy without strength, I’d been slower, the lack of endurance meant I was already feeling tired, and I felt the adrenaline and shock nearly crushing me without a mind stat to back me up. I felt weak, raw, slow, and lesser all at once. I’d barely had the stats for long but I dreaded for a brief moment how awful it felt being without them.

I quickly turned around to check on Rick and Jessica, only to blink at their expressions.

They were staring at me with shock and awe.

“So… uh… we should probably watch out for these guys.”

“Dude!” Rick immediately said. “That was so cool!”

Jessica just sat there looking stunned for the moment. As if she couldn’t believe her eyes. I wanted to say something… and then I heard the distinct sound of something hitting the ground.

“We should probably run away now.”

******

“I don’t see how it can’t bother you Rick! We aren’t real.”

“Yeah but like… so what? What is real? Like whoa, groovy man, you know what I mean?” Rick said that last part in a stereotypical hippy accent.

Currently, we were walking around the backrooms which was… strange to say the least. There was a lot of beige walls and beige walls that didn’t connect to anything. It was strange, the lights hummed annoyingly, there were plenty of dark areas, and the air was stale. There were also monsters roaming about and Rick had his sword on hip and ready. Jessica had her pistol strapped to her side, but unholstered, ready to draw it at a moment’s notice.

It had taken around an hour, but without any other monsters suddenly showing up to mess with us, they’d gradually calmed down. Rick was confident he could find the exit, he had brought tools specifically for it. Tools namely being a sharpie, a single youtube video he watched, and enough food and water to last the three of us at least a week. He was damn confident that if we just followed the right wall, and went all the way around the disconnected pieces, marking it with a sharpie, we’d be able to find the exit eventually.

Which meant a lot of walking. A lot of walking in circles, more or less, at that.

“No, I don’t know what you mean Rick!”

“The line between real and not real is just, thin, is what I’m saying. I remember the last twenty two years of my life, college, you guys, my family. I’m still me as far as I know in personality too. So, let’s say the real me out there loses two weeks worth of time. The last two weeks. Matt doesn’t fall into a coma, he doesn’t try and get him out, he never goes to the backrooms. Would he be fake then?”

“He would still exist.” Jessica shot back.

“And so will we! Hell, we know we’re existing right now. In a terrible zombie apocalypse, but still.”

“That’s not the same thing! We… those aren’t us! It’s, not the same us. We’re like, clones or something.”

“Hmm. Well, I guess it depends. I don’t feel like that time in second grade when I shoved cake down Matt’s pants at his birthday party was fake. He remembers it, I remember it, you remember it, and there’s definitely proof it happened, so, what makes it fake? That it didn’t happen somewhere else?”

“That…” Jessica paused, that annoying line of reasoning finally winning her over a little.

Rick just kept on whistling, while I scanned the area. Despite seeming relaxed, we were still on guard. There were monsters and Cable creatures might not be the only thing out there. The last thing I wanted was to have something I didn’t see coming to ambush us. The worst were the dark areas but we tried not to avoid those either. It could really hold the exit.

“...But what about after Matt leaves?” Jessica asked in a small, weak voice.

A hard grimace appeared on my face and I assumed Rick’s as well. I didn’t hear him answer. Jessica continued on in that silence.

“What if we just disappear Rick? Matt, I don’t… I don’t want to die like that.”

Guilty strung at my heart and-

“Hey. No. Don’t put that on Matt Jessica. I know you don’t mean to but…” Rick sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe we die. Maybe this world dies. Maybe we just forget about Matt entirely. Maybe the world is rewritten without him. Maybe a subconscious version of matt appears and this whole dream world just keeps on going. Maybe we remember the ‘real’ Matt, maybe we don’t. I don’t know. But I do know this.”

“If we don’t get Matt out, he will die.” Rick said, voice serious as the grave.

Jessica seemed to stiffen at that, and I turned to her, a hard but fearful look appearing in her eyes.

“Yup. That’s why I’ve been trying so hard you know guys! No offense Matt but… you’d have given up damn near immediately.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“No but come on dude. An apocalypse world is way worse than just believing it was just a dream. Can you imagine if I just didn’t believe you and you just disappeared one day or suddenly died for no reason? Better to err on the side of caution you know? And besides… hey Jessica. Did he tell you he got turned into a woman over there?”

“What?”

I cringed inwardly, but kept going, ignoring the very animated discussion and frankly terrible questions Rick was asking. Damn you Rick. I’m gonna get you back for this somehow. When Jessica also started to ask some terrible questions, I knew in my heart that I was going to have to pay them back somehow.

The hours just kept going on and on and on and on and on and on and at some point, I realized something important.

I stopped. We hadn’t been going in circles but…

“We’ve been here for days.” I said suddenly.

“What?” Rick asked, confused.

“It’s been too long. I started counting the seconds a while ago because I got bored and… and I think we’ve been here for days.”

“But… how?” Jessica asked. “We haven’t even slept. Or eaten or drank anything. Our food…”

Rick unzipped the bag and pulled out some food. Most of it was MRE type stuff, things that would last, some jerky, etc. But he’d gotten fresher stuff too, that we were going to eat at the end of the day.

They were clearly already stale or starting to spoil. We all stared at it in shock.

“This place is… strange.” I finally said.

“You could say that again.”

“This place is-”

“Shut up you.” Jessica replied. “So, how have we just walked around for days and not noticed or gotten hungry or tired?”

“I guess the backrooms are just like that but thats not the problem. The longer we stay here… the longer Matt can’t return. It had been around a week when we’d left… how long has it been now?”

That was a terrifying thought. Would the challenge still hit me in a month’s worth of time? I’d be dead. No matter what the challenge was, I probably couldn’t win asleep.

“There’s nothing for it… we just have to keep going I said. At least we don’t have to worry about food and water.”

“Speak for yourself, I really wanted to eat that ham sandwich.”

We kept going, on and on. No monsters appeared and I didn’t know whether that was good or bad. Would monsters be closer to the exit? Christ, was there an exit? Were just eternally doomed to walk in this purgatory forever? Had I trapped not only myself but my friends in-

“Look!” Rick shouted.

I did, I’d already seen it, and relief must have filled all of us.

It was a fire door… with a clear ‘Exit’ sign above it.

I sighed in relief, before looking around us just in case.

My heart froze in my chest as a terrifyingly wild smile gleamed back at me, not two feet away.