Before, I wouldn’t have believed a word of what the old man said.

But in the past few hours (or minutes. God knows how long I was out cold for), I had ended up in a world of white inhabited by a single person who told me I wasn’t supposed to be there. Then I woke up in a classroom with an old man saying that there’d be a monster that would appear in the room in 5 minutes to hunt us down.

And all this after a shot of vodka…

I scratched my head.

Maybe the vodka was psychedelic?… But this wasn’t a hallucination…

Was it?

4 minutes and 39 seconds remained.

I scratched my head.

Well. If what the old man said about there being a monster in this room was not true, nothing would happen to me.

But if what he said was true then…

I bolted out of the door and into the corridor.

I was a fool to even doubt his claims.

After all, he’d given me a metal token that was plain cardboard to everyone else.

There was a brown door at the end of the sterile hallway and I swung it open in a hurry. A blast of cold air hit my face and I winced for a moment.

And when I recovered, I gasped.

The shining night sky was presented to me in all its star-studded glory for the first time in my life. I’d always thought those pictures of the night sky with all its stars and galaxies and the clearly visible band of the milk way were exaggerated.

But now I realized that no picture or even words could give them justice.

And below that night sky was a small neighborhood that I’d walked through to get to the bar.

In every house the lights were on and the curtains were not drawn. I caught sight of someone familiar hurriedly drawing the curtains and switching off the lights.

Rest assured, this whole process of staring at the night sky in awe only took a few seconds, so I wasn’t wasting my time. I could stare at the night sky for hours, but here I didn’t have the luxury of time.

So I threw a glance back into the empty hallway and bolted down the metal stairs.

The stairs creaked under my weight and I dashed down the well-lit but empty streets of the neighborhood. The only sound was the slamming of my shoes on the ground. Besides there not being a single other sound, there was not a single other person on the streets.

And only then I realized the truth of this place.

Hell, I knew it the moment I stepped out.

Why? Because there was not a single place in the whole damn city where you could see the stars as bright as this. This place was Amsterdam, but it was also somewhere else.

And as the old man had said, the objective was to survive. So I acted accordingly.

I sprinted down the empty streets and a fence came into view, blocking the way. Almost unnaturally, it ran through the street.

And in the middle of the street, there was a wide gap in the fence. An entrance. But it was like a strange fog, swirling and reflecting effervescent colors.

I ignored the mysterious fog and dashed into the entrance of a nearby house and slammed open the door. Then I quietly closed the door and tip-toed my way through the suburban dutch house. Upstairs was a bad idea— no means of escape.

So that left any of the rooms downstairs.

Fuck. This was basically hide and seek, except you died if you were caught. My heart pounded in my chest as I walked around the ground floor, searching for the best hiding spot.

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And then I found it.

In one of the rooms was a bed with its large headboard just below the window. I ran behind the bed and pushed it slightly away from the wall, and then unlocked the windows.

Then, urgently, I rearranged the blanket so it now draped over both sides of the bed— covering the underside.

With all my preparations complete, I slipped underneath the bed and sighed in relief.

And then another sigh came from beside me.

“What the fu—!”

“Don’t worry! Don’t worry! It’s just me!” A hushed, urgent voice sounded from beside me. It was the baby-faced boy with glasses who I saw when I woke up.

“What do you mean ‘it’s just me’? I don’t even know who you are.” I replied in hushed tones.

“I’m Janco. Janco Williams. Nice to meet you.”

Cramped together under the frame of a bed— he had extended his hand for a handshake. I stared at the hand, and then back at him, making him shyly retract it.

“I’m Enzo.”

What do you know about this place and the monster? That old man must’ve said something.” I asked.

“Ah, right! You were not out cold for the explanation. Sadly, regarding the monster, I only know as much as you do. Only that when the timer is up, we will all know.”

“We will all know? Ho—”

As soon as I had asked that, a robotic female voice sounded from all around us— as if it came from the ether around us.

“0 MINUTES REMAINING.”

Shit.

“Look. Janco. If the main door breaks, then that’s our signal to get out through the windows.”

“How do you know the main door is going to break?” He asked.

“Because I locked it. And I’ve locked this door too.”

Aside from the sound of our hushed whispers, there was not a single other sound, and that disturbed me greatly. Not the chirping of crickets, not the rustling of the leaves, nothing.

And then we both heard a distant scream.

We turned to look at each other.

“The windows… The windows are open right?” Janco asked.

My heart was in my mouth and I managed to mutter out a half-certain, “Yeah.”

“Do you th—”

I put a finger to my lips and glared at him. I swear, if I died because of this idiot and his yapping mouth, I swear I would come back to life and kill him.

Growing out from the uncomfortable silence around us, was a soft squelching sound.

Shivers ran down my spine as my mind conjured up all sorts of images. How disgusting could it look like to make such a sound? I turned to my right and saw Janco gagging. I would’ve told him to not make a noise.

But we both stayed silent. The fact that we could hear it meant it was close. The sound grew louder.

And louder.

Until the sound of the extremely wet mass squelching was extremely clear. If it was this loud at the main door, how loud would it be inside the house?

I turned to Janco, verifying his presence and signaling to him to get ready to make our escape.

We held our breaths— as if the very act of breathing could alert it of our presence.

And then there was a creaking sound right above us. We both turned to look at each other. Wasn’t that the window?

The window? Wasn’t it supposed to come through the door? Wait. Why did I assume it would come through the door at all?

The bed suddenly groaned and shook with a sudden weight and our breaths stopped. The squelching above us grew louder and I heard something softly touch the ground to my right— obscured by the blanket veiling the sides of the bed.

And then another sound like that.

And then

SLAM!

The squelching mass of whatever it was slammed onto the floor and I felt the vibrations of its impact travel through the floor and to my body.

The blanket shook.

My eyes were wide open as they tracked the sound moving behind the veil.

And through a sliver of light at the bottom of the veil I saw formless shadows and vague shapes moving across.

Whatever ‘it’ was, it crawled slowly along the floor with its lumbering and squelching mass.

I heard the door creak as it slowly swung open. And we both unconsciously let go of the breath we held— turning to look at each other in relief.

And then the door stopped. Fear returned to our gazes as we stared in horror at the slowly returning sound. It moved back— almost as if retracing its steps. The formless shadows shifted around the sliver of light at the bottom of the veil and at that moment, I cursed every single decision I’d made up to this point.

I remembered my father, my mother, my sister, my friends Rian, Yokuttan, Sangria, Lavanya and Astoria. I remembered them all and all the people I’d met until that point.

And despaired at how I’d never said a proper goodbye to them.

Charred black, stick like fingers slowly came through the underside of the blanket and lifted it up.

And then we came face to face with the ugly monstrosity. The dry, gaunt skin on its skull-like, eyeless face stretched thin as it smiled, and licked its ugly lips.

And at that moment, we both knew we’d lost this cruel game of hide and seek.