I looked around, still dizzy from the commotion, and found myself in an abandoned house of sorts. How did I know it was abandoned? The mushy wallpaper, which fell in pieces here and there, would have been sign enough, but on top of that, there was practically no furniture other than the occasional table, and the scratched floor planks had a layer of perennial dust that would have caused a duster to explode if it tried to take it in.

I moved forward shyly. The creaking sound of the old wood startled me, and inside the dark rooms, I still expected to see those writhing nightmares from outside. Yet, my eyes deceived me, for this was a natural darkness – or at least as natural as darkness could be in a haunted house in a hellscape of a parallel reality.

In the room I was in, there was a little nightstand next to the lamp, and I rummaged through it in hopes of finding something to help me get through this. Opening the drawers, I found an energy bar, which I promptly devoured, a flashlight with no batteries, and a note that I read aloud:

"If you're reading this, forget about whatever place you came from.

This is your home now; there's no escape – believe me, I've tried.

Behind every shadow,

every tree,

every seemingly empty room-

resides a terrible creature waiting for you to slip up. Some are smarter than others.

Never trust anyone – not even me.

I leave this note and my flashlight in the hope that you'll succeed where I failed: you have to survive on my behalf; it's too late for me.

As I scribble this note, I'm about to walk outside and let those fiends consume me, just like they've consumed everything else in their path.

—M"

A sudden feel of uneasiness travel through my body as I realized that "M" never mentioned any energy bar in his note. He did mention not to trust anyone...

Could it be that the bar I had so eagerly eaten was poisoned with some sort of other-wordly venom?

For a moment, I feared becoming unwound, and I imagined my limbs slowly peeling off, revealing a dark shadow within, like a liquid petrol cloud.

I paralyzed, and a minute went by, then yet another. I sighed. It's just an energy bar – a foul-tasting and not-at-all filling one.

My mind wanted to wander to lands of myriad foods and sweet pastries: a land where there were too many flavors of energy bars – sweet strawberry, sour ripple, refreshing blueberry, and ice cream. But there was no time for that; I had to get back home.

I moved up the stairs, each floorboard creaking loudly. I tried, vainly, to walk slower, yet even if I moved at half an inch per second, I'd still make noise. Still, I couldn't just run around the house nonchalantly; I'd try to be stealthy, even if for my own sake.

I climbed the stairs, and I felt the light dimming behind my back; soon I'd be once again in complete darkness.

As I climbed, I felt that gravity somehow changed, and the rules of physics no longer applied: I was climbing stairs that were completely upside down!

The light that was at my back appeared to be at the very end or beginning of the stairs.

I'm not a science fan; I've never thought much of Newton, Galileo, Einstein, and all those figures with their numerical rules. But I can tell you one thing: when you're walking forward and you don't know if you're going backward, up, or down, you can clearly feel the wrongness in your very bones.

I don't need any heavy textbook to tell me that this isn't supposed to happen.

I got closer to the light, thinking that it would shelter me from whatever haunted the dark. But as I got close, I started hearing disturbing sounds – like water splashing against a damp carpet or a similar surface, but not quite, like it was something more viscous, maybe mucous or... or blood.

I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and could hear a loud, acute voice, like a man pretending to be a woman, muttering to himself:

"We have to take care of every little detail.

Everything must be clean.

Don't you know you get dirty on your insides too?

You naughty, naughty boy!

Don't you ever wash inside?"

He kept repeating the same weird phrases about being clean and pure. He wasn't alone; he was... washing someone, perhaps? I had a bad feeling, doubled by the fact that I was still walking on the ceiling.

But I was in the dark, and he was in the light, and a potent curiosity struck me.

You have to understand my situation: I'm lost here, in God knows where, and I finally hear a human voice. Even though this man clearly isn't well, maybe he has some answers or is doing something that could explain the nature of this place, at least a little bit, shed some light, so to speak.

I kept moving forward. God, I was wrong.

There, below, a bald man with no eyelids and no lips dug into another's open skull, washing his brain with a soapy sponge. The wet sound I kept hearing was the slimy liquid the bald man kept draining from the other. The other man sat quietly and didn't move, no matter how much the bald man poked inside his brain.

The eyelid-less man spoke through his bare teeth:

"How dirty! I just keep cleaning more and more; there's no end to it! We're going to have to change tools..."

And then he pulled an iron sponge from his cleaning kit, approaching it to the other's open skull, and I could even feel those sharp-edge stainless steel micro-blades grating against my brain. I averted my eyes; I couldn't bear to watch more. I ran away, but the loud creaking noise made the Cleaner aware of my presence.

"What do we have here?

Another naughty boy?

Did you take off those dirty, grimy shoes before coming inside the house?"

I didn't look back; I kept running without thinking about how the world around me turned and twisted. I went from the ceiling to underneath the floor, to the point where I didn't know if what was beneath me was a stair or a flat floor.

Next to me, I could see the wallpapers start to peel themselves as the booming voice of the thing chased after me. It was fast and would catch up to me.

I turned a corner and hid inside a kitchen cabinet, without really knowing how I got there. He was close, too close. I tried to close the cabinet's door, but couldn't find any, so I just closed my eyes and prayed the hated darkness would shield me from the perverse creature.

I could hear the steps slowing down as it called for me:

"I know you're hiding here... You can't hide from us... Did you brush your teeth? Plaque is very, very hard to remove..."

I shuddered at the thought of that thing having access to my teeth. I had to keep happy thoughts, control my breathing.

"I'm floating, and this is all a dream. I'm floating my way back home, and when I open my eyes, I'll be next to my bed because I fell, and that's why the wood feels so hard against my body. I'll wake up and cry to Mom, and she'll make me some hot cocoa and tuck and she'll make me some hot cocoa and tuck me in, and I'll tell her to keep the lights off because the lights are bad, and IT can see you if you're in the light.

I kept hearing him; he doesn't go away. He's going to find me, and he's going to crack my skull open like that man. Oh God, was that M? It was going to eat my thoughts and my dreams, and I'd become a hopeless husk just like M, scribbling notes to other hopeless souls with no hope that they'd get off this nightmare, that they'd be spared, and that I would also get spared with them.

Does God exist? Will He save me from that thing?

I breathed in, then out. The air filled my nasty, slimy lungs, and then it left through my disgusting windpipes, past all that nose hair that I wished I had plucked so that the thing would have one less thing to torture me with.

In, then out. In, then out.

It was quiet now. I waited a minute, trying to regulate my furious heart that threatened to burst out of my chest. Had it gone away, or was it still waiting? Would I open my eyes and find it staring at me with its unblinking eyes and its perpetual predatory smile, its head cocked against the cupboard?

I waited another minute, as long as my eyes remained closed, I wouldn't see it. I'm lying; I'm seeing it right now, as that deviant image has burnt itself into my eyelids, and it pierced the darkness of my closed eyes to show its deformed face.

I forced them open. Nothing. Silence. Dim light shed over the rest of the dusty kitchen. I peeked outside, and it seemed like it had gone away for now, but it'd be back. I had to keep moving.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.