On the fourth night, which landed on a Monday, everything seemed the same, save for the peculiar humming no longer being within the room. I was in the middle of making a mental note to start writing some of this stuff down to figure out if there was some kind of esoteric meaning to this weird room until I realized that something big had changed.
The door, which was sealed shut the night before, was slightly ajar. A faint pale light shone through; interestingly, the white textureless floor bore a faint shade of purple around the outermost edges of the light shaft.
Curious to see what exactly was outside of the room, understandably getting bored of seeing the same blank void over and over again, I cautiously approached the door and looked through the opening. What I saw defied logic, science and sheer common sense.
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Through the gap, I could see what appeared to be a nebula or some kind of astrological feature of comparable scale and beauty, the vibrant deep blues, purples, greens and reds scattered in every direction, faint white specks glowed and flickered in the mass of colours. The faint lustre of the coloured void was bright enough to illuminate but dim enough not to harm one's eyes.
I leaned against the door to try and get a better look at the outside world, causing it to creak and move slightly, prompting me to step away from it, not wanting it to close by accident. I carefully reached a few fingers around the edge of the door. I pulled it open, the light from outside flooding through the wide-open doorway, revealing an even greater expanse of the beautiful nebula.
The ground outside appeared only to extend a few feet from the doorway; whether there was something beneath it or if it just dropped off into eternity was a question I was unwilling to test at that time. A strange, almost dull neon grass carpeted the ground; it didn’t sway. Rather it flickered and jolted around, the static rustle of the grass and how it moved alluded to some kind of breeze wrapping around the structure travelling from my right to the left, a breeze which must have been far too faint for me to feel.
Deciding to get a better view, I walked outside to try and take in, or rather comprehend, my surroundings.
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Looking above me, I could see what looked like clouds twisting and shifting across the sky, if one could even compare what I was witnessing to an actual sky. These clouds moved in highly erratic sweeping motions; at first, I thought they were some kind of giant gelatinous flying creatures drifting around the void due to their unnatural motion.
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Strings and waves of pearlescent light weaved and flowed through the air on occasion; what seemed like electrical discharges like lightning flashed from the strings, shocking the air around them to no effect. The exact origin of these lights and what they meant would remain a mystery for now, but they appeared to remain fairly close to either the distant clouds or the island.
I could smell static in the air, and I could taste a mixture of brass and salt; it was far too weak to be overpowering my senses, but I could certainly feel that the air here was strange, that something was deeply wrong with this place. I could feel my pulse jump up considerably, anxiety insidiously setting in from the weirdness around me. Was I alone here?
Looking behind me to see the mysterious structure that I found myself trapped within over the last few days, I see a shockingly well-built stone brick structure with large metallic bars hammered into the stone, presumably to help bind it together like a roof timbers or rafters.
The stone bore the colour of light peachy cream with the texture of sandstone; running my hand over its surface, I could feel that it was extremely smooth - rather unexpected for something that looked like sandstone - even the groves between slabs and the edges around the metal bars were exceptionally flat and smooth to touch.
The door, from the outside, was unremarkable; it appeared to be some unusual white door, unusually normal compared to the greater context of the world around it.
I could now see that the structure and myself were stranded on some kind of floating landmass; approaching the edge of the island, I looked over the edge carefully to avoid losing my balance; there was nothing beneath me other than a continuation of the nebula.
My fear that I was alone in this place could not be true; structures don’t just magically appear from nothing because the cosmos willed it; somebody must have made this thing at some point, but for what purpose?
The strange humming sound from earlier came back again, only this time it grew louder and louder. I step away from the edge of the island and look around to try and find the source of the mysterious hum.
Approaching the floating island from behind the structure was the silhouette of presumably a far, far larger island. It was drifting right towards me; its textureless form approached at a terrifying pace.
“Where did it come from?” It would have been the first thought to cross my mind; something that large couldn’t just appear from thin air; I would have seen it coming earlier when I left the structure. I barely had enough time to think before the geological bulwark impacted the island, launching me clearly while the sounds of rock and stone grinding against one another, sending me into a panicked dive over the edge into the abyssal void, my body slowly freezing solid from the cold.
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I found myself jumping almost clear of my bed when I abruptly awoke from this nightmare; I immediately climbed out of bed and had a very, very hot shower, though the burning heat did nothing to soothe the chills that dominated me all day.
Coincidentally day five’s night was calm; I was spared another trip to the trippy reality, leaving me hoping that this was the end of the night-terror bullshit and that I could enjoy my night's rest again.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, day five’s calmness was simply the nightmare engine spooling and revving up in preparation for day six…