What was it doing here?

It shouldn’t even have existed in the first place…

This room… the one from my nightmare…

Mira leaned in and with a hushed voice asked, “What’s wrong?”

I was too shocked to speak or do anything. I didn’t want to be there. If this place was real then that means the monster was too.

Suddenly the monster’s words popped into my head again. “Soon…” Those words frightened me. I didn’t want to see that thing again. It’s soulless face, with its missing eyes and its hung opened mouth like a dead corpse.

“Jae?” Mira bumped my shoulder lightly trying to get my attention.

“No I can’t…” My breathing got heavier, as my heart felt like it was going to leap out of my chest. Something inside of me was telling me to run. I know I probably shouldn’t but I had to get out of here. I turned back towards where we came from and started to run.

“Jae no!” Mira yelled from behind as she tried reaching for me, but I kept running. When I looked back, that thing had turned its attention towards me. It ran past Mira as it started to chase after me.

Where was I going? I don’t even know, it was too dark to see. The elevator was nowhere in sight even though I could’ve sworn I should've already come across it. But there were just more and more rooms in this never ending hallway.

That thing was closing in on me now. From its almost human-like form it now has transformed into a monster with four legs and its neck has grown like a giraffe, with its head twisted upside down. I was running out of breath, that thing was faster than me. Running out of options I leapt into one of the rooms.

A classroom… It looked just like the classroom at my school. All the desks were arranged in the same manner, and the whiteboard had the topic we were learning that day. There were some backpacks left on the back of the chairs, I recognized some of them as my friends’. But how could that be?

I didn’t have enough time to think as that thing busted through the door. Shit… I was cornered now with nowhere to go…

“JAE!” Mira ran around the monster and took my arm. “Don’t go running off on your own!”

The monster was hovering closer towards us now. It started to unhinge its crooked mouth, baring its fangs and sharp teeth at us. Drool slobbered down its mouth as it snarled. Mira was looking around the room trying to figure out a plan to escape. But there was nothing that we could use around us, all the chairs, backpacks, and tables were out of our reach. Eventually she stopped in her tracks and stared at the monster.

“Jae, do you trust me?” She whispered towards me as she kept her eyes on the monster closing in on us. I quickly responded yes as fast as possible, she must’ve figured something out. She took a deep breath and sighed before saying, “Okay then…here we go!”

She turned around, facing the window, and threw her body against the glass. The window shattered around her and I was pulled along out of the window with her.

We were falling. It was like falling in a bottomless pit, it was too dark to see the ground.

“Why did we jump?!” I yelled.

“We had nowhere else to go.” She responded. Then she looked over at me and smiled. “Besides, isn't this more fun!”

“Do you have a plan?” Panic started to kick in.

“Nope! None at all!” She started laughing hysterically.

She was laughing… We were falling to who knows what and she was laughing! She was absolutely crazy, she had a few screws loose in her head, that was one thing I was sure of. Was it really okay for me to trust her? I should’ve just stayed at home. More regrets started to well up as she continued laughing to herself.

Well if this was it I guess I had to accept it. There was nothing I could do now, we were both doomed. I closed my eyes and waited for the impact.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Now…” I heard Mira whisper under her breath. I couldn’t see what happened next, but I felt Mira’s chest as she hugged me from behind. And the next thing I knew we were standing on a hard metallic surface.

“What happened?” I was shocked that we were still alive.

Mira already had let go of me and was fidgeting with the weird contraption on her wrist.

“Thank God this thing worked or else we would have been splattered!” She gave a triumphant smile and chuckled to herself.

So there was a chance we could’ve died… I was hardly in belief. I really shouldn’t have trusted her enough to follow her here.

“Okay! So what do we have here?” She went down on all fours and put her ear to the ground. She knocked a couple of times, listening. “Strange…”

“What is?” I asked. She hopped back up and started to walk away. I tried quickly to catch up with her.

“The metal that makes up the ground here isn’t from earth…” She explained as we continued down another dark path. “Which means that these things are from another planet…”

“Aliens?” It should’ve been hard to believe, but after seeing her fall from the sky and those creepy things out there anything was possible at this point.

“Exactly!” She seemed to get excited again at that thought. “So if aliens are here on Earth, then that means they’re here for a reason…”

A bright, blinding light came into view.

“We’re here!” She exclaimed.

“Where are we going?” Why did she have to keep running? I was running out of breath trying to keep up.

“Trust me! We’re getting close now!” How could she be so excited in a setting like this.

We passed through the archway into a giant white room. It was probably the size of a giant warehouse. In it were rows of giant glass boxes, and in each one were people.

“What is this?” I was shocked.

“These are your missing victims!” She spread her arms out and walked backwards. “Each and everyone here, were taken from their homes by that bus!”

They all had the same smiles on their face, grinning from ear to ear. As we walked past they would stand there and staring, their heads following us, smiling.

“What’s wrong with them?” I asked. “Why would the aliens do this?”

“That’s what we’re going to figure out!” She replied as she was observing one of the people trapped inside.

I stood around waiting as she continued investigating, when I noticed two familiar faces a couple of boxes down from where we stood. Mira must’ve noticed them too as that was the next box we headed towards.

“Hey Jae…” She grabbed my hand tightly. “These are your parents right?”

My parents… They were still alive!

“Mom! Dad!” I ran up to the glass and put my hands on it. They didn’t have any sort of reaction, they continued to stare. I banged on the glass trying to break it but the glass was too tough. I kept yelling to try and get their attention or any sort of reaction but they just kept smiling.

Soon after, we heard the sound of a door slide open. The sound must’ve attracted the guards as their footsteps were headed our way.

“Shit guards!” Mira exclaimed as she pulled my hand away. “Jae, we gotta go now!”

“No! My parents!” I tried resisting but Mira was a lot stronger than me.

“Don’t worry we’ll come back for them!” She was hurting my arm, dragging me further away. “For now we have to run!”

“I promise we’ll save you!” I yelled one last time. I knew that we had to get away but the pain of finally finding them just to be taken away again was too much to bear. But I saw it, even if it was just a glimpse. A single tear fell from my mom's eye, they were still in there somewhere.

With that small sliver of hope I stopped resisting and followed Mira, as we ran to the other end of the room to a door. The door opened to a brightly lit hallway with two guards standing at the opposite end. They were luckily facing the opposite direction, but Mira pulled me aside into a small corridor.

She pointed towards one of the guards and whispered, “Look carefully…”

The guards were both dressed in all white cloaks, their garments reminded me of ones monks would wear at temples. One of them turned around and the face was the same as in my dream. The eyeless creature…but there were multiple of them.

“It looks like those are the culprits behind this mystery…” Mira grinned. “That makes things a lot simpler.”

We waited in silence for a bit just observing until the guards eventually walked away. That’s when Mira took my hand and we walked silently past. We walked like that for a bit, tip toeing and creeping around any of the guards we saw, going down the twist and turns of this endless maze. We finally stopped at a door with weird writing on it.

“Authorized Personnel only” She read out loud. “This must be it!”

“You know how to read that?” I was amazed, to me it looked like a bunch of scribbles.

“Well you go around the galaxy so much you have to pick up some things.” She seemed proud of herself as she said that.

She broke the panel to the side of the door, and started twiddling with the wires. The door slid open revealing what was within. It was some sort of reactor room. There were rows of panels and machines that probably helped contain what was behind the other side of the glass.

“Holy shit…” This was the first time I heard Mira this shocked. “So this is what you were hiding…”

Behind the glass was what seemed like a giant crack. But the crack wasn’t on the glass, it wasn’t on anything at all. It was just in the air, floating, emitting a shining light.

“What is it?” I was confused, what were they trying to hide?

Mira didn’t even look away from it. All she said was, “That there is a rift in time…”