From where I stood, my pillow suddenly seemed extra soft. I didn’t know how much longer I could resist its temptation. At that point, all I wanted was to close my eyes, turn over a new leaf and… Leave the long day I had securely shut in a chapter behind me.

See, I was so exhausted that the dreamland couldn’t wait for my body to fall asleep before claiming my mind. From the corner of my eyes, I could already see shadow figures and speedy large spiders that… Were never there when I turned to look.

But of course, had I fallen into deep sleep that night like every other night, I wouldn’t be here telling this story, and you wouldn’t be here reading it. I wouldn’t be telling you that, no matter how safe you think you’re being, there will always be a window of error, something you’ll fail to consider perhaps… Something that’ll escape your control…

And just like me, someday you’ll find yourself in a situation you never thought you’d be in. Those stories that only happened to other people, those traps you swore to never be stupid enough to fall for, well…

One moment I was getting ready for bed, for a good rest in the quiet provided by the night and… The next, before I could even fathom what I’d heard, my legs had already moved, out of my room, through the hallway, down the stairs and finally… The door.

At first, everything seemed ordinary, the sky tinted with its accustomed dark shade of blue, the stars shone bright like their usual. The neighborhood however, felt unusually quiet, it was like people had heard the same thing I had, like everybody killed every sound around them out of curiosity but nobody bothered to come out and check. So, tired as I was, I thought I should probably do the same and just forget about it, only…

Only, I had no home to go back to when I turned around; What I had left behind was replaced by a sight from hell, the once dark sky was of a fiery red, the ground sandy brown, dry and barren and it extended as far as my eyes could see. The flora of that environment was as dead as the sorry view I was gazing upon.

Left, right, front and back, I had nowhere to go, I couldn’t recognize any part of that place no matter how much I looked around myself.

And then it hit me, my heart began to sink down to my guts, slowly but surely. Why did I do that? Why didn’t I do what I should have done like I was taught to since my childhood? I had one freaking job in that situation, one! But I managed to screw that up, so there I was, debating which feeling to push forward in the long waiting list of sensations brewing inside me.

A loud ear-piercing howl arose steadily, very similar to the one I’d heard in my bedroom. I couldn’t pinpoint the direction it came from; it echoed between the walls of my skull and then, just as it started, it came to a cease.

Something cracked behind me, and I instinctively flipped around to be met by a vision of such horror that I believed, English didn’t hold enough words for me to describe it accurately.

There they were, a whole bunch of them, feasting upon the fresh flesh of another still alive poor creature. I watched as they drenched the soil around them in its blood, as they mercilessly tore through its meat and I… Listened to its shrieks of agony, although I couldn’t tell what species they were, neither the eaters nor their food.

They were all identical, four feet tall, they had no necks, the tops of their bodies were simply round. They looked like live black blobs and quite frankly they seemed almost cute… At first. But then they looked at me and my legs began to slowly take step back after step back, one foot behind another, my speed was increasing; I just knew I had to get out of there, I knew I was going to be their next meal if I stayed, the eyes of a predator were unmistakable.

They had noticed me, they had caught on to my audacious plan to save my skin from them and they were not going to stand for that; they began advancing towards me, leaving the already half dead creature they were munching on a few seconds prior, to agonize as it patiently waited for a slow death to come.

I broke into a run, disconnecting my gaze from their traumatizingly mesmerizing eyes. All I could hear at that moment was the sound of my heart beating hard in my chest, their joyful screams as well as that of my desperate inhales and exhales. Another blood curdling howl came to disrupt that pace, I looked behind me only to see a bunch of blobby dark figures darting in my direction. They were fast, very fast, the distance between me and them was shrinking considerably and I wondered how long before they closed in on me, but I just kept sprinting as every fiber of my being screamed to never stop so, I didn’t.

I must have been running for a while, the terror had me in its clutches so tight I didn’t notice that, the blobs where nowhere to be heard anymore. I turned around and I could see them standing in a straight horizontal line next to each other, it was like I had crossed an invisible line that they knew better than to cross.

It was silent all of a sudden, deafening. It sent shivers down the deepest corners of my soul. I knew it wasn’t over yet, I knew I wasn’t out of that nightmare yet. I was correct, right at that thought I heard a muffled giggle, its tone made me extremely uncomfortable. I heard it again, a bit louder and closer than the one before.

“You crashed their party,” someone said to me. Were there any humans other than me in that place? I thought.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Funny, I should ask you that. Wandering into my territory… Uninvited! Might I add,”

“I didn’t want to wander,”

“Come this way,” they said.

“Which way?” for the few words we had exchanged, I still couldn’t see them.

“Any way you want, just walk,”

So, I did that, I walked. To be fair, I was not sure I had any other choice but to oblige. My train of thoughts shut down immediately after my eyes could perceive her… Him, It?

Their voice sounded gravely but feminine and definitely on the older side. That was how my human brain managed to describe it anyway. They sat cross-legged on the ground, even with that imposing hunch on their back, they were clearly abnormally large despite their humanoid appearance at first glance, they were taller than me without the need to even stand.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

They were covered, head to toe by a large black robe, and they made sure to conceal their face as much as possible from me, for a reason that I couldn’t be bothered to find out, all I wanted was to get the hell out of that place.

“Sit !” they ordered, cutting my thoughts in their process once again, with more authority in their voice than they had before. I obliged again.

A very low and small table held space between us, separating me from the creature as we faced each other.

“What do you want?” I mumbled.

“What do I want? I thought you were the one with questions,” they answered.

“Well, if you could answer one question, it would definitely be, how do I get out of this place? I just want to go back home,”

“You are not the least bit curious about this place? Usually, the visitors I get, ask me a few other questions before getting down to business,” they said.

I didn’t think I was sitting too close to them, but apparently, I was sitting close enough to catch a whiff of their scent. I easily recognized their smell to be that of decay, of a rotting corpse. I couldn’t stop my stomach from churning, but I did my best to force the refluxes back down my throat. but wait a minute, “Usually? visitors before me? Business?” I didn’t throw my dinner back out, but I sure did vomit all of those words one after the other.

“Ah! There it is, your tongue is finally untwisting,” they said eerily too cheerful, then they continued, “You are not very far from home, as strange as that may sound to you, in fact on the contrary you are very close,”

“What do you mean?”

“Let me guess, you heard a strange howl in the night, and you went out to investigate, then you found yourself in our land? That’s what people usually say when they reach me at least, when they are lucky enough to do so,” I didn’t utter a word, expecting more, “But usually, they all come from one place, one peculiar town hum…,” they appeared to be seeking the name of said town.

“GrayBird?” I tried.

“Why yes! You are from there too I see, but most of those I spoke to before you seemed more curious about this place than you,”

“I am not here to explore, I…”

“You broke the rule by accident!” they roared along with a fire that I could have sworn wasn’t there before.

I felt ridiculous, even a creature in such a hell hole of a place was mocking my pathetic state. But before I could say anything they called for my attention again, ”Well, in that case, the less you learn about this place the better, just know that I am your only ticket out of here,”

My eyes opened wide at those words. For a second, I wondered if it was only a cruel joke but, my desperation chose to believe it even if it was one, “What should I do?” I hastened.

“Play a game with me,”

“Is this a joke?”

They seemed to brush my question off and instead, gracefully gestured down towards the small table. On it sat three golden upside-down cups, “You must find the blue eye,” they simply said, before lifting all three of them to reveal… Three eyes, all of which had a different color, and each was hidden underneath their respective cup.

They looked like they were freshly gouged out of their sources. A question bubbled up in my mind and I asked it before I could consider it, ”What happens if I fail?”

“You pay a small price for the opportunity you’re getting,” they sounded almost annoyed, something told me that I didn’t want to find out the cost of my failure, ”Shall you succeed, I will grant you a one time ticket out of here, and you will make sure to be more careful next time, but shall you fail, you must pay the price,” they finished.

“And I will never get to go home?” I panicked.

“Of course not, it wouldn’t be fun if that was the case. See, you have one chance at this game every twenty four hours,”

“If I pay the price of my previous failure…”

They remained silent and proceeded to cup the eyes again. They began to shuffle the cups around and shamble them and at first, I could easily spot the cup that covered the blue eye but… As time went by, their speed started to increase, and they switched the objects so fast that I’d lost track of the right one.

My eyes were frantically thrashing between them in a hopeless attempt to find it but fear got the better me.

If I could have afforded one moment of clarity, it was right then or never. I discreetly uncrossed my legs and instead sat on my knees, ready to push my weight back on my feet at a faster rate, and when it finally finished shuffling, it rested their arms back on their legs and waited.

My hand shakily pointed towards the middle cup; they pushed a low malevolent giggle that froze my blood. At that point, my entire body was shaking, and I shyly lifted my eyes towards their face, that… They finally decided to show me.

Everything after that happened so fast, I saw the small table get thrusted far from where it sat before, the creature stood. I almost sprained my ankle as I hurriedly stood from my place and turned to run for the hills, run for my life, run… Like hell. Despite everything that was said, somehow I knew I didn’t want to pay that stupid price of theirs, I knew it was far more expensive than they made it out to be.

As I ran, I finally allowed myself to ponder on their features; first their eyes, far too big in proportion to their face in my opinion, the inside very similar to those of humans, they had pupils and scleras but had no irises and no lashes either.

Their skin was the color of a severely anemic person, they had very thin purple veins protruding from underneath. And when they stood, they did so at almost 9 feet of height.

Once more, I was running like there was no tomorrow for my soul, and once more when I turned to check for my progress, I found the creature standing still, just like the blobs it was as if it knew not to wander off outside their own territory.

Only this creature did not remain silent, it spoke to me, parting words. It sounded like it was warning me from something, ”You should have never done that! I am the nicest being you’ll ever come across in this land! But you soon, very soon, will understand why every human that sets foot here rarely gets to leave!”

I did take them seriously, but I still had no choice but to keep on walking, until the next dweller perhaps or a miracle.

Just when the word ‘ miracle’ crossed my mind, a warm and welcoming bright gleam reached my sight and skin. I apprehensively stepped towards it but something about it convinced me to let my guard down and have faith in the light.

It felt like it was my only chance, my way out, like I was finally going home and as soon as I was close enough to see what was beyond it, that vision drew a so long needed, genuine smile on my face.

I was back in my bedroom, it looked exactly like I had left it moments before. I scrambled to the window and was very relieved to see my old boring neighborhood. I hysterically ran through the hallways all the way to the kitchen and even the bathroom just to make sure that I was truly back in my home. I leaped up and down, laughed and then cried, I almost kissed the floors.

And then I remembered the reason I got into that mess in the first place. I carried my exhaustion back to my bedroom where my bed and pillow screamed for me to hop in.

I lied down, threw a last look at my room before turning the light off. Everything seemed ordinary, all my furniture looked back at me from their usual places, including that sad old painting of Dante's inferno or whatever the hell it was supposed to represent, hanging on the wall facing me.

There were many things in GrayBird Town to keep an eye out for, many phenomena, happenings, rules and tales that go around.

One rule to never forget here is: If you ever hear a single strange howl in the dead of night in GrayBird Town, whatever you do, never go out of your home to investigate.

I was taught this rule ever since I learned to walk on my own, but that day I finally understood why, and I swore to never make that mistake ever again.

I closed my sore eyes trying to fall into that long overdue slumber, but the last words of that creature chose precisely that moment to sink deeper in and…

My eyes shot open when I remembered that… I never had an old painting depicting the semblance of hell in my room.

I… Wasn’t in my room.