[10. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU LEFT YOUR “COMFORT ZONE”?]

If I don’t have to, I won’t. As of right now, yeah, I’m pretty outside my comfort zone. Scratch that. Try across the universe from it.

~~~

It’s cold. I expected that, so I’m not surprised by the blast of freezing air assaulting my face as soon as I open the door. But my expectations for the weird in this world didn’t exactly include this.

There used to be, count: one, two, three, four, five other houses besides Jerkface’s. Now there’s only one. What’s weirder is the forest that now surrounds us. Yup. Totally wasn’t expecting that to pop out of the snow out of nowhere. Nooo, not popping out of the snow like daisies at all. *Insert eyeroll here.*

It was just a whole bunch of ice everywhere before. But now there’s towering snow covered evergreen trees on all sides, only I can’t really call them evergreen. Everorange might be a better description. It’s actually pretty cool to look at. Orange on white.

Obviously, if you can’t tell already, the house and I are not in the same place we were yesterday. Jerkface’s corpse is also missing, so that pretty much settles that (though now that I think about it, do ghost corpses stick around? Or do they disintegrate or something? Idk, I’ve never killed a ghost before). Ether that or some animal dragged it off while a wandering herd of trees decided to plant themselves here. I wouldn’t be all that surprised if that was actually the case. Learning to expect the unexpected indeed. Still doesn’t explain the missing houses unless they wandered off as well. Speaking of, is this other house even one of the original ones that I first saw? Who knows.

Well, either way, that kinda ruins my plans. I mean, I was going to raid all the other houses, but now I have only one neighbor, and the implications of the scenery shifting at random are disconcerting. That means it’ll be ten times more difficult to find Jerkface’s house again if I ever lose sight of it. As much as I’d love putting up lost house signs on all the trees, that’d be a major problem. This is not at the level of getting lost anymore. More at the level of a maze with shifting walls. I’d never find it again. I’m in major need supplies, but is it worth the very likely risk of losing a safe place to sleep?

I grimace. It’s no use. I’m not sure how long the supplies in the house will last. A couple of days, maybe weeks. I could stretch it probably to at least a month, but that’d mean a while without fire wood. The chill would seep in, and I very likely might freeze to death before ever starving. I might be blowing that out of proportions. Idk. I’ve never been in a survival mode situation before. I have no idea what to expect.

Let’s face it. I’m crap scared. I’m scared of being alone. I’m very scared of being eaten. But I’m most scared of doing nothing. I’m scared that I’ll lose whatever little courage I’ve gathered to even be standing outside here in this freezing crap wasteland of a place and that if I go back, I’ll never come back out. I’m deathly scared of breaking down.

A chunk of snow slides off the roof and hits my head, jerking me out of my sinking spiral of thoughts. I shiver and wipe it off before taking a massive breath and shaking myself loose.

Alright. No use worrying about it. I literally can’t do anything about well, anything. If the house disappears, I’ll cry, but it’s not like I can’t find anywhere else to stay . . . right? Ug! Stop it. Just stop it. I keep psyching myself out! ARG!

I slap my face hard and take a resolute step towards the other house. Once I’m moving, it’s easier to distract myself from my anxiousness in stepping away from my safehouse. The forest is absolutely gorgeous. There’s a lot more plants than I’d expect for an evergreen, er, everorange forest, especially since it’s winter.

Plants plants. Hm. You think there’s some good plants to grow in the greenhouse in that forest? If anything, even a sapling would do. I’m nervous about what kind of creepies will be in there, though. It looks fine right now, peaceful even, if I dare say, but it looks like just the type of place skinny faceless dudes with tentacles might wander around in after dark. I’ve really had my fill of skinny dudes, but having my plants, having something familiar in unfamiliar circumstances might help stave off insanity. If I look around after looting the house, it should be better right? If they do appear, they won’t be as scary as they would be in the dark. I hope they won’t be there at all, but from what I’ve scene of this place . . . Sigh.

Soon enough, I reach the other house. And man is it really run down. I must have scored some prize with Jerkface’s house. There’s no door to this house. Nor anything covering the windows. The boards that make up the exterior are all faded gray and worn down, looking like they might pop off and turn to dust in the wind any second now. It’s a disturbingly empty shell, and worse, it’s making me feel very uncomfortable. It’s the house itself that creeps me out, not exactly anything inside it. But as much as the place repulses me, it also draws me in. I don’t like it. I’d rather not go in there, but I find myself stepping through the open doorway anyway. It feels like I’m stepping through an open mouth. Let’s just hope this place doesn’t have a stomach.

The first room is empty except for doorway on the opposite wall of the front door and a rickety wardrobe with faded red paint peeling. It’s sagging like some messed up drunk against the wall in the corner, partially covering up the doorway to the other room. A hole the size of a watermelon is smashed through one of its doors. There’s no creepy vibes from it, so I walk over and open it up. Inside is a wool cloak in pretty good condition. A few moth-chewed holes, but nothing irredeemable. I slip it on. It smells a bit musty and is a bit big, but I start warming up almost instantly. Nice. I take a second move the scythe harness to the outside of the cloak and to roll up the sleeves a bit so they won’t get in the way.

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Next in the wardrobe is a pretty deep leather bag. The leather is cracked and worn in several spots, but it still seems usable. I flip open the flap and jerk back as a moth flies into my face. I yelp and accidentally smack it in surprise. It falls to the ground limply. I bend down and poke at it. It twitches a little.

It’s not exactly a moth, actually. I can’t decide if it’s creepy or pretty. It’s got three lobes to it’s furry white wings instead of two, with strange black markings, one of which almost look like a palm print with six long, delicate fingers. It’s also got these four compound eyes, two normal ones with two small ones sitting above them. Reminds me a bit of a wolf spider actually, but with less eyes. I’m not really sure if this is a ghost. It feels a bit different somehow.

Without exactly knowing why, I pick up the moth and slip it into my new coat’s pocket. Still, there are other things besides ghosts living here. I suppose I should feel comforted. Instead, the thought scares me and I don’t know why, which scares me even more.

I gulp, trying to push down that feeling, and check the what’s in the bag. There’s an old, molding handkerchief. Gross. I throw that away.

Next I pull out a pair of alligator hair clips. There long and gold and absolutely beautiful. They look brand new, practically glowing. I use them to clip up the left side of my hair. It’s the hairstyle I feel most comfortable in. It helps calm me down a bit. There’s also this weird little pouch of some kind of white power. Chalk, if I had to guess. I have no idea why it’d be here. I have no use for it right now, though. Frowning, I put it back in the bag.

And, that’s all there is. All that’s in the bag. I’m a bit disappointed. With how deep the bag is, I thought there’d be more in it. But It’s nice that I can carry my loot in it though. I double check the wardrobe to make sure it’s also empty of anything else. Yup that was all. Alright then, so far we’re off to a great start. Got a winter jacket and a bag to carry loot, plus a random moth, some hair clips, and a pouchful of chalk. Alrighty then, I guess. I swing the bag over my shoulder, adjusting it so it sits comfortably under the scythes in my makeshift holsters, and step over the wardrobe and through the doorway leading to the only other room.

By the way, the room, it’s absolutely disgusting. That’s the only way I can describe it. It’s not disgusting in that it’s rotting or covered in a weird film of mold and frost, which I mean it is, but it’s more in the sense that looking at it turns my stomach. It’s disturbing, and looking at it in comparison to the first room makes it ten times worse. If the front room was an abandoned house a little worse for wear, the inner room is, in a word, collapsing. And by collapsing, I mean in on itself. Like someone buried a black hole in the ground underneath it and it’s trying to suck the whole room in.

The floor has a gaping hole in it, the walls are slanted inward toward the front room, the ceiling is collecting in the middle like a water drop, and it all literally hurts to look at, like some cat-in-the-hat slash horror movie remake. I always found that character beyond creepy.

Something about this room makes it feel like it’s not really here, like I’m looking at an optical illusion that’ll disappear once I step into it. And yet, my eye keeps being drawn to the ladder leading down into the depths of the chasm in the floorboards. All the bad juju vibes I’ve been getting from the house as a whole have been basically flooding out of this hole in the ground. It’s soooooo creepy. It’s making my sixth sense or whatever it is go haywire.

I feel like I’m a character in a horror movie. I know it’s a horrible decision. I shouldn’t follow through with it. There’s no logical reason to. Bad things can only happen. It’s obviously shouting stay away with that overflowing toilet bowl of ominous vibes. But I have to go down there.

A second later, I snap awake, only to find that I was literally drawn down into that hole. I have a vague recollection of climbing down a frost covered rickety ladder with several broken rungs, but for the life of me, I can’t remember starting down it. I definitely climbed down the old ladder in some sort of daze. Dust clouds poofed into the air with every step down. Some of it got caught in my throat, and that’s what jolted me out of it. I wake up to a massive coughing fit. I wipe the tears out of my eyes when it subsides. I look up. Woah, that’s a crap ton of ladder. Just how deep am I? I almost can’t see the top. Here I am, almost at the end of it. Climbing down an ancient ladder into a creepy hole in the ground like I’m hypnotized. Not horror movie esque at all. I feel like crying.

Considering that I have almost no memory of the descent, I feel way more tired than I should be. My arms and legs are shaking and I’m panting heavily, a combination of lack of air and probably exercise and the coughing fit just now. I don’t think I can make it back up at the moment. I’d probably slip and fall instead. Ug. Don’t like that thought. Instead, I start more carefully down the ladder. Three more steps and I’m at the last rung. A puff of thick white dust mixed with ice crystals blooms into the air as I step onto the ground.

It’s eerie quiet at the bottom. It’s a bit dark. Light streams down from the floor above, barely reaching the area around the bottom of the ladder. I frown, letting go and turning around. Really, how did I climb all the way down without knowing it?

I peer into the darkness, waiting for my eyes to adjust. The room is larger than I expected. The dusty floor span two car lengths across and wide. Strange that the ladder lets down right in the middle of the room, though. I can’t say anything about the design choice, only that it makes the hairs of my neck stand on end. After all, the whole room is absolutely empty.

Like I thought, it’s not really the house giving me bad vibes. No, it’s definitely something in this basement room. Specifically something under the floor I think. Only I can’t tell where exactly. The vibes radiate like heat off, well, a radiator, making the whole room feel like an ominous frying pan, except, you know, without the actual heat.

Actually, it’s freezing in here. Even colder than outside. So cold it kinda does feel like I’m burning up. Freezer burn or something. Luckily the coat’s pretty thick, so at least my chest is warm. I let out a cloudy puff of air, nervousness filling me.

Something’s watching, but it doesn’t feel like it’ll make a move unless I move away from the ladder. I glance around. Why am I here? It’s clearly dangerous. There’s not even anything here that would make the risk worth it. I reach my hand back to grab a rung of the ladder, only to stop just before touching it.

A horrifying feeling crawls up my spine.