There was no warning.

You’d think that with me getting into a story as ridiculous as this would be forewarned with… something.

You know – prophetic dreams, an unexplainable sense of dread, or just waking up on the wrong side of the bed.

But it was actually a pretty optimistic morning.

The week before I passed all my exams with flying colors, a day before received an acceptance letter from the university, where I’d hoped to study game design, and I made myself a very good breakfast that morning.

The only thing that plagued me was the anniversary of…

I shook my head. It doesn’t matter anymore. Not really.

+++

“So, you’re feeling better?” the sound of a clock on the wall was bit too loud for my liking, the walls too white, and the air too sterile.

But I have gotten used to it. As, I’m sure, did she.

“You’ve asked that question three times already!” mom lightly chuckled, and ruffled my hair.

I abstained from pointing out, that she ruffled my hair much more than just three times.

“The doctors say I’m getting better, and I feel that way,” her smile looked genuine enough, and the sparkle in her grey eyes – a welcome reoccurrence – seemed much livelier today than the last time we’ve seen each other. “Don’t worry,” a serious expression overcame her face “I won’t leave you,” she pulled me into hug, which I happily leaned in to.

I closed my eyes and buried my face in her neck and we just sat together silently for a while.

The 2020 many consider to be the worst year in the history of the modern society. Well, I can’t speak for society, but for my family – it was a long nightmare none of us could wake up from.

Some of us never did, and never would.

Mom got of relatively easy, and I myself was physically unharmed.

Though, I’m afraid, some less material scars would take a long time to heal…

“So,” mother ruffled my light brown, almost blonde, hair. “Have you heard back from the uni?”

These words brought a smile so wide, that for a moment I was concerned for the integrity of my mouth.

Mom, seeing my expression, smiled back and hugged me again.

+++

I was opening the door of my apartment when the world moved.

Or, more I accurately, I moved.

The next I moment I felt motion.

It wasn’t the same motion as, say, moving in a car, or sliding down the water slide.

It wasn’t motion through the air, or, really, through anything strictly real.

It was as if my whole being was being sucked through a very long, very narrow tube.

I felt my body… compress for a lack of a better word, and squeeze in between a… something. Something small and… huge.

Smaller than anything the science on Earth ever discovered and bigger than the human mind could possibly comprehend, and would go mad trying.

In that infinitely short instance – I tried, almost reflexively, to look around.

Colors.

From the mundane red and blue and green and yellow, to colors that – I somehow knew that instinctively – Homo sapiens sensory organs couldn’t see, and which I couldn’t describe even if I dedicated my entire life to that one single task.

Colors were everywhere – behind me (if one can use words as “behind” and “front” in the state that I was at the moment), in front of me, in…

That one is moving towards me!

A bright blue snaked through paradoxical space towards me, dodging and evading all the other patches (clouds?) of color.

The blue rapidly crossed the distance (was there such a concept as distance at this place?) and lunged at me.

The bright blue pierced my essence of being and I felt an atrocious pain, pain that I do not think is describable by human tongue.

Color wedged somewhere deep within my skin, expanding to cover my whole being and then drilled even deeper into my body.

Did I mention that it was painful?

Did I mention that red, the shade of a freshly spilt blood (don’t think about it, don’t think about it…), decide to get in on the fun?

Because red pierced me in the next moment, and embedded itself deep into my solar plexus, snugly filling up my chest. But not covering my whole organism like blue.

Then, the torture was over…

Or only just begun… That depends on your point of view, really.

+++

I hit the ground hard.

My mind was still reeling from the eldritch experience that I’ve just been through. My whole body ached – ached in that infuriating way that wasn’t too painful but uncomfortable as all hell. But my eyes.

Oh, my eyes. They burned.

For a moment I thought it to be a literal pain, similar to what the rest of my organism was feeling. But no. Eyes hurt… deeper. They hurt more than just a sensory organ would, through an overwhelming overload. The hurt as… as… pathways. Pathways to soul – I had no idea where that analogy came from but I felt it accuracy on a fundamental level.

I had enough self control to not rip my eyeballs out of their socket, but that was about it.

The next ten minutes I spent writhing on the floor – ice cold floor, might I add – crying tears of pain and trying to collect the fragments of my mind that transition to here shattered.

Finally, the burning in the eyes slowly receded.

Well, that deep burning.  Now they just hurt from the amount of tears I shed.

Great.

That being said, I could finally form a coherent thought! Progress!

Realizing that I was in a horizontal position, face down on the floor, I pushed my shaking frame of the… ground?

No, that’s definitely man made.

I blinked away the blurriness from my vision and squinted.

My hands were planted on a charcoal black metal. The ground was certainly the floor.

…Anyway.

I wiped my palm on the cold surface, wiping away the sweat from my skin.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

My apartment’s floor was not made of black metal.

And what the hell was that?!? The colors, the not-real space, the deep pain?!? What just happened?!?

I pushed myself vertically – perhaps a rash decision, as my head swam, not fully recovered, and I had to catch myself on a nearby wall, that was also made of the same material as the surface on which I stood.

Pushing past the nausea that threatened to empty my stomach, I surveyed the area around me.

…There is definitely something wrong going on.

I was in a perfectly square room, with high ceiling and a circular door on the other side.

The whole room, as well as a door, was made out of that damn-cold metal, and the only source of illumination were the two thick lines of grayish white light, stretching across the ceiling and the floor, which lead to the circular door.

And door – it had to be the door, its edges were outlined with the pale blue, and it had a deepening in the shade of a vaguely human palm. It looked like something from the futuristic movies.

I looked around again.

“That… what?” I managed to force out and broke into a fierce cough. My throat was dry as a Saharan desert.

Okay, I’m… certainly not home. Probably not anywhere near… But… how is that possible?

A myriad of answers flooded my brain, and I didn’t like any of them.

So far the leading theory my mind came up with was teleportation or isekai.

That… well, I think a year or two ago I would have been going mad with excitement but…

The year or two ago I didn’t live---… survive through 2020.

And mom was getting better.

And I got accepted into the university.

And I was going to study my passion, and…

I raised my fingers to my mouth and bit down hard.

The pain brought me back to my senses, at least for a time, and I made a titanic effort to think calmly.

“Okay, so… priorities”

I tugged on my hoodie and covered my head. It was almost freezing here.

“Right… first – let’s get out of here” I carefully walked to the door and inspected it closely.

Well, if it wasn’t for the deepening in it and the pale blue halo surrounding it I wouldn’t have realized it was there at all.

I cautiously push my hand into the deepening.

Aaand it immediately sucks in my arm up to the elbow and tightly closes around it.

Do I need to mention I immediately regret my decision?

“H-hey, let me out!” I banged my free hand’s fist against the hatch.

There wasn’t even a bang, just a silent thud.

The halo of blue around the door began to ominously hum, and the intensity of lightning in the room grew by the second.

The brain helpfully added an image of chicken being heat up in the microwave, which sends shivers frigid shivers down my spine.

I kicked my leg against a hatch, while desperately screaming obscenities in the space around.

It did not look impressed. I mean – the space and the door.

“What do you want from m---!!! Ouch!” my arm felt like a thousand very small and very heated needles pierced.

Very heated. Like grains of sand – just as coarse – from the world’s most hot desert.

The sensation was less abominable than I thought – perhaps I just got used to feeling pain today, or the feeling was actually not as horrible as it felt.

Finally, the humming stopped with a very Earth-like “ting!” and my arm was released from its pain box or whatever it was.

I gently cradled my hurting appendage with my other arm. Surprisingly, the cloth on it looked untouched.

I slowly rolled up the sleeve to find the flesh underneath unharmed.

…Well, that’s some Dune crap.

And right then the hatch, with loud hissing, slid open. As in, it slid back into the glowing halo that surrounded it.

…What the fuck. That… that’s some sci-fi crap. What the hell???

I shook my head and did a breathing exercise my dad taught me.

Count to four… breathe in… to four… out.

Okay so… am I just going to accept that something entirely fantastical was happening to me? Well, yeah, not like I had much choice left.

So… Does that change anything?..

I don’t think so, no. I still need to survive – and I already had no doubt in my mind that my life was in severe danger – and get back home to my family.

Or, what’s left of it.

My hands balled into fists until the knuckles cracked.

Mom… dad… I will see you again. I promise.

With that thought ringing in my head, I stepped through the door.

+++

The premises beyond my short-lived prison were dark. So much so, that I couldn’t see farther than my outstretched hand, and even then the fingers were mostly consumed my darkness.

Thankfully, it only lasted for a moment – the two lines of light abruptly shot out of the room and beaten back the dark. Then, they raced to the left, completely abandoning the right side, leaving it unlit.

…Was I being “gently” shown the way? It looked like it.

My first instinct was to abandon the direction and go the opposite way, but I quickly squashed it.

What was I going to do anyway? Rush head first into the swallowing abyss that loomed the other way? And how fast will I be lost?

I followed the light. Quite literally.

…I admit, the analogy wasn’t very heartwarming, but I didn’t have much of a choice, did I?

My footsteps echoed in the space around, bouncing of the unseen walls of the corridor (?), while I carefully moved between the two LED-like lines of light on the floor, mirrored by the pair on the high ceiling.

And when I say high – I mean about two meter above my head. And I’m a tall individual.

The whole place gave off this air of gigantism, which unnerved me.

For whom was this hallway designed for? I have deep doubts about it being meant for human habitability… And how many resources did they waste building it?

This is increasingly becoming much scarier.

The glowing lines started to intensely pulsate.

By this point I was walking in complete silence, save my breathing and footsteps, for ten minutes, and such a radical change in scenery – considering that everything else was coated in thick veil of darkness – stumped me for a moment.

“…What?” I asked the empty space.

My only answer was the same pulse of light.

What’s that supposed to---

A quiet clang of metal on metal sounded behind, and in a deafening silence that hung around that nearly made jump out of my skin.

I instinctively looked back, hearing my blood pumping through my ears.

In the next moment blood began to pump much, much faster.

The figure was tall. Inhumanly tall – it didn’t scrape on the ceiling but I was barely chest height to it.

It was slim and spindly, its four hand-limbs twisting and rotating in unnatural ways, its head sporadically turning in all directions. The two legs of the thing were thin and reminded more of long sticks, rather than limbs. The ended with bird-like three digit feet.

Its whole body was angular with sharp edges, spikes protruding from it in random places.

It was made out of the same black metal that I walked on, and it six red eyes locked onto my face.

The hand-manipulators stopped moving, their five digits immediately shaping themselves into sharp looking claws, claws that were about the same length as my forearm.

The thing ominously whined, like old machinery being start-up for the first time in years.

My conciseness forced my fleshy vessel to shake of the bindings of fear and run.

Do you know that taste of bitter-iron taste in your mouth when you get really scared?

Well, I was half sure that I won’t taste anything else ever again in my life.

My feet pushed against a ice cold floor beneath, all concerns about cold gone, as I sprinted along the glowing lines, while furious cling-clang of iron on iron chased me, with every moment threatening to snatch me with it’s cold metal arms, with razor-sharp claws and…

Less thinking more running!

The lines abruptly turned left.

I felt my eyes widen.

The impact to the metal wall knocked the wind out of me; I was barely able to roll out of the way of monster chasing me, before it shared my fate.

The iron slenderman knock-off met the wall with bone-aching sound of scraping and crushing metal. It impact was so heavy that the sound of it ringed across the corridor and left my ears hurting.

I did not turn away to look at it, instead scrambling to my hurting feet, and using the wall as a support I assumed vertical position.

There.

The door. Just like the one that I went through earlier.

And it’s opened.

I couldn’t run – my feet stung from intensive running, and my legs bruised from the impact on the wall.

I limped as fast as I could, using the wall as a support, while behind me my pursuer whirred and hummed with obvious irritation and rage.

I was just two steps from the door when the chilly claws of my mechanical death grasped my foot.

Its fingers buried themselves deep into my flesh and I screamed in pain and stumbled, falling to the floor.

I got my chest hit the floor hard, solar plexus suffered the most, and dots began to cloud my vision.

With the titanic effort I turned my head to look at my enemy.

It looked like it was barely functioning.

Two out of its four arms were missing, the only still glowing eye balefully glimmered at me, its legs were completely gone and it was dragging itself with the last of its limbs.

The claws sunk deeper into my skin and the blood sprayed out.

I clenched my teeth and blinked away the tears of pain streaming down my face.

I was halfway through the door, and the only remaining parts of my body beyond the hatch were my two legs.

The one was still more or less functioning, the other…

The things second arm grasped at my damaged limb and even more blood spilled out, coloring the black metal of the wall and the monster a deep red.

“You will not kill me.”

It would appear I wasn’t the only one stunned by the calmness of my voice, as the thing reared its head, seemingly in surprise.

I only had one chance.

All my remaining extremities planted themselves as firmly as they could against the closest surface they could find, and, witt all my remaining strength and might, I pushed.

The pain was beyond description.

The sound was even worse.

The bones and meat, the muscle and tissue, torn and cracked with my remaining ounces of strength.

The thing realized too late what I was pulling and the only thing that I left it was my right foot in a boot.

My body fell down, surmounting the door and landing with my back towards it.

My vision swam, the poor color scheme of the place dimmed even further, and my right leg felt like it was burning.

But I survived.

My lips weakly stretched into a thin smile.

It quickly died as I heard all too familiar sound of metal on metal behind me.

I pushed my body to face the door.

The hatch was still open and the thing stubbornly crawled towards me, its mechanical joints whirring victoriously.

In its left hand it held my nipped foot.

Its left hand reached the door.

I didn’t have enough stamina left to feel defeated.

It right hand reached the door.

At least I tried with all I had, right?

Its left hand crossed the doorstep.

It’s still a damn shame though…

Its right hand never crossed the doorstep.

The hatch’s metal shield momentously sealed of it evil red glimmer from me.

Its left hand, still clutching my dead foot, detached from its body with a triumphant screech.

Then, its sloppily fell to the floor.

The last thing I saw, before my consciousness left me, were the metal claws, holding my foot.