Ryan stalked down the hall, their weapon rested on their shoulder while their flashlight barely illuminated the path in front of him. He felt like the hall stretched for kilometres, but he noticed similarities. It was duplicating. Every drawer had a chip on the side of it, the picture of a girl with her face scratched was crooked on the wall, and the faded black wallpaper with five dent marks.
What made him worried was the lack of sound. He stomped on the ground to hear nothing. He made a pop sound with his tongue and heard it, which made him glad that he wasn’t going deaf even if it still made him uneasy.
He knew everything was wrong, its dimensions made no sense as the hall seemed way too big, and its length defied logical consistency. With every joke, he tried to calm himself down with some humour. To find a sense of sanity in a house of madness.
‘How do you pronounce the fish without the I? Fsh!’ He chuckled to himself, though it didn’t make him feel better. He felt that he was being watched, that something was behind them.
He turned around to make sure, only to be welcomed by a L-turn in the hallway. It wasn’t there before. Ryan’s heart pounded as he knew he was walking straight for what he thought was an hour.
At the corner were two right orbs, Ryan thought nothing of it until it slowly blinked at him. Ryan pointed his torch in its direction to find nothing.
Ryan shook his head, ‘yippee, Agent Ryan going postal in West Germany of all places.’
He turned around, for he believed the turn was a trap. Only to be facing a brick wall. He mumbled under his breath; he could see that the creatures were messing with his perception. So, he walked towards the corner, to find a wooden door at the other side.
He sighed before he whispered to himself. ‘Yee to the fucking haw.’ Wood splintered and hinges bent as Ryan kicked down the door to bolt inside a massive banquet hall. He ducked behind a table, only to emerge soon after for being surprised at the scale of the room. The banquet hall was the size of the house that he entered. The roof and corners had gold all over it, the table made of ivory, and the cushioned chairs made of silk and silver. This shouldn’t be possible!
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Ryan scanned the room and marvelled at its beauty, yet even behind the beauty it felt uncanny for the room was a poor recreation of the Buckingham Palace dining hall. Its colours were off, and the patterns were just skewed enough to pretend to be its own thing. Why this room? Why copy it?
He knew he shouldn’t waste time examining the whole thing. He walked towards the windows to try to get a sense of what was outside. He frowned since the only thing he saw was a wall of black stones that covered his view. Like he was inside a box.
Ryan froze when he looked to his left. A face smiled back at him, its smile similar to that of a person salivating or out of glee. Its mouth was crooked, its teeth twice as long and twice as thick compared to normal, its eyes looked like a cartoonish concept of what a human eye should be, its nose was missing, its ears were placed near its neck, and its neatly groomed hair was at the left side of their head.
Ryan ignored the creature, his face pale while he made his way back outside. He pretended that there was nothing when he knew well that he made eye contact with the creature. By ignoring the monster, he reasoned that it wouldn’t attack him. See no evil, hear no evil, know no evil. Yeah, that is how it works.
As he entered the hallway once more. The banquet hall vanished behind him, replaced with the continuation of the hallway the moment Ryan turned around.
Thump!
Ryan snapped back around, his gun at the ready as he heard a footstep. His sub-machine gun bobbed up and down, his breath unsteady and uneven. My mind is playing tricks on me again. Yeah, that must be it. All just tricks in my head. He shook his head while he continued his march forward. To find an escape or die trying.