I woke up.

It felt good to wake up. I felt like I’ve been asleep for too long, too much of my morning wasted. I blinked as I sat up and looked around the room.

I blinked again.

I didn’t recognize this place. It felt like a prison cell, windowless, with the walls too close to one another and nothing but my bed occupying it. This isn’t what my room looked like… In fact… I had zero idea what my room was supposed to look like.

Confused, I stood up and stretched my legs. With a grunt, I reached up my arms, clasped my hands together and heard something crack in my lower back. Definitely been asleep too long. There’s a small mirror on the door to my… room, I suddenly noticed. A stranger looked back at me. Young of age with middle-length black hair, a soft beard adorning his chin. The stranger was wearing plain clothes, but something showed on his chest. I looked down at my own chest. On the plain clothes I was wearing, the only oddity was the number 83 embroidered into the cloth.

This was me. But who was I?

The question lingered in my head as I opened the door. A tension I didn’t notice I had left my body as the handle clicked and the door swung open inwards. Carefully, I peeked into the dull, grey hallway. It was abandoned as far as I could see, but there were other doors. Some closed, some open. As I contemplated my next move, the sound of a door opening resounded from further down the hallway. I hid as a man stepped into the hallway. He was quite a bit older than I was, but he seemed equally confused.

More doors opened and others made their way into the hallway. Men and women of all ages engaged in worried conversation as I stayed in my room. The words were too jumbled to understand, but it wasn’t hard to imagine what they were talking about.

What is this place? And how did I, we, get here?

A bell chimed out of nowhere, the sound clear and pristine. The vibrations of the sound soothed me.

“All here present, please make your way to the main hall.”

The bell chimed again, and from the hallway I could hear the shuffling of feet. Their voices diminished and eventually died out as they made their way towards this main hall. Oddly enough, a strange feeling filled me. Some sort of compulsion that egged me on to follow the others. I tried to ignore it as I stayed in my room, weighing my options. With every second though, the feeling got stronger until it became too much to bare and a headache began to form.

“Fine,” I grumbled as I finally stepped into the hallway and made my way towards where I had heard the voices trail off. Every door I passed was open and showed a room identical to mine. Too narrow for comfort, one bed and no windows. The only source of light in this place so far, I noticed, were the LED-lights that lined the ceilings. There were numbers above the doors. I passed by number seventy-eight, looked back and counted up towards eighty-three. My room, corresponding with the number on my shirt.

As I continued my way through the hallway, the sound of voices returned. More voices than before, I realized. Soon enough, I made it to the end and found myself walking into a massive hall that enveloped several floors. The center was a huge square, its ceiling reaching all the way up to the tenth floor. All around, on every level, were balconies. People were emerging from all levels, all making their way down along the stairs towards the ground floor where dozens of people were already scattered around the tables and chairs.

Being on the first floor, I only had a short walk down and soon found myself surrounded by numerous strangers. We were all wearing the same, plain clothes, I noticed. Everyone had a different number though, ranging from the lower tens and below all the way to well into the three- and four-hundreds.

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I avoided conversation as I stalked my way through the crowd, listening in into conversations and looking for clues. Unfortunately, my knowledge of this place seemed to be shared by everyone else. Nada. Some speculated they were in a special prison, others argued for social experiment and some choose to go as far as alien abduction.

Minutes later, the bell chimed again and a hushed silence fell over the main hall. Some looked around nervously, others expecting.

“Welcome,” the same voice from earlier resounded from invisible speakers. “You are confined to this building. There is but one exit, which will open once only three of you remain.”

The bell chimed again and the feeling of compulsion that still lingered disappeared. Conversations sprang up everywhere around me. Most carried the tone of confusion, but some seemed to steer more in the direction of excitement.

Something felt off. What had the voice said again? The exit opens once three people remain? My thoughts raced from one possibility to the other, but it didn’t take long for a sense of doom to encroach on me. There were over four hundred people here, and only three could leave. This would not end well.

True enough, seconds later a scream cut through the crowd.

“He slashed me!” someone cried out. I hastily made my way back up the stairs and looked down at the crowd. A small circle had opened near the middle, in the midst of it stood a man holding his hands to his throat. Red spots dotted the ground around him.

“He has a knife!” the wounded man yelled as he pointed at someone in the crowd surrounding him. In response, the accused perpetrator jumped out from the crowd, knife in hand, and stabbed the man in the chest. The already wounded man collapsed, his assailant standing over his body with a sinister grin.

“That’s one down,” he growled, his words reaching over the silent crowd so even I could hear them clearly. “Let’s count down to three!” With a yell of madness he jumped to a random bystander and started slashing and stabbing again.

Finally, the crowd seemed to understand what was happening. Some screamed and started running, others yelled in glee and began assaulting whoever they could find. Chaos erupted. I was too stunned to move for a moment, but eventually someone bumped into me as they as well made their way up to the stairs and I was awakened from my trance.

Shit. Shit. Shit!

It was all I could think as I ran back to my room.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

How had I ended up in this madhouse? Screams and cries ringed in my ears as I raced through the hallway.

Seventy-nine. Eighty. Eighty-one. Eighty-two.

Eighty-three!

I rushed in and slammed the door behind me. With a grunt, I lifted up my bed and moved it to block the door from opening. The mirror shook as bed met door with a soft slam. Good thing they open inwards.

“Fuck!”

I couldn’t help it. The initial confusion of waking up here, the strangeness of this place, the mysterious message, the sudden killings… It all became too much in that moment.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fucking fuck! Aaaagh!”

Although it did nothing to remedy my current situation, I had to admit it did help me calm down and collect my thoughts.

“Fuck!”

Ok, now I’m good.

I retold myself what had happened the past twenty minutes and in the end, I concluded it all made zero sense. This whole situation was seriously messed up.

A scream cut the silence that had come over the hallway on the other side of the door. Then several loud bangs and more screams until it was silent again. I held my breath and kept an eye against the door, listening carefully to what transpired outside. To my horror, I heard footsteps slowly inching closer and halting right in front me. It was by pure instinct that I moved back a second before something crashed into the door.

Then it hit again as I crawled backwards. And again. The mirror fell down and shattered, the glass shattering into a dozen pieces. Finally, the wooden door splintered, an axe peeking through it. Two more chops and the opening in the wood was now big enough to fit an arm through. The axe was pulled back and in its place, a face looked at me through the hole.

The face of insanity. A bloodied grin with eyes that thirsted for violence.

“There you are,” a raspy voice emerged from the face. “You’re next, kiddo.”

Faced with imminent death, a certain peace came over me and I suddenly knew what to do. Before I could second guess myself, I launched forward, grabbed a piece of the broken mirror and stabbed it right through the man’s left eye. With an agonizing scream, the man leapt backwards, blood dripping down from his face.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the sight. What was wrong with me?

My joy didn’t last long as someone else, someone I hadn’t seen, stabbed his knife straight through the hole I was looking through.

Straight into my brain.

I blinked.

And I woke up.