I screamed.

Before I could help myself, I fell out of the bed.

Wait.

What. The. Hell.

Frantically, I looked around the room. The door was intact, my bed in the right place. The mirror still hung to the door and the man that looked back at me seemed to be missing a knife to the face.

Was is just a dream?

I opened the door, walked into the hallway and looked up to the space above the door. The number eighty-three, corresponding with the number on my shirt, was in the exact same place. How could I have dreamed this without ever seeing it before? I flinched as other doors began to open and the same people I had seen in my dream emerged.

One of them walked over, the number seventy-nine on his shirt. “Do you know what’s going on?” the older man asked. “Where are we?”

“I…” I hesitated. “I… don’t know,” I responded.

Others joined us, asking the same questions and providing the same answers. I jumped as the bell chimed.

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

It chimed again with that soothing vibration and the people around me agreed to walk down the hallway. I lingered for a few seconds to confirm… Yep, there it was. That same feeling of compulsion of the dream that I was beginning to suspect hadn’t been a dream. I followed the others into the main hall, finding myself arriving in familiar sight.

What the fuck, I whispered to myself more than once. What the fuck. What the fuck. What the fuck.

The bell chimed and the same silence fell over the crowd. “Welcome. You are confined to this building. There is but one exit, which will open once only three of you remain.” With another chime, the message ended as did the feeling of compulsion.

I recalled the events from the … dream. With a start, I realized I stood right where the first attack had happened. In a panic, I pushed myself through the crowd towards the stairs just as I heard the same scream that had broken the silence the first time.

“He slashed me! He has a knife!”

Just as I reached the stairs, the chaos erupted. Not looking back, I kept running towards my room.

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Seventy-nine. Eighty. Eighty-one. Eighty-two. Eighty-three!

I rushed in and grabbed the handle to slam the door shut. I hesitated. So far, everything had repeated itself in the exact same way. If I locked myself into my room, would the axe maniac be back as well? Would I end up in the same situation?

“Fuck!”

That felt good. Again.

Not giving myself the time to change my mind, I grabbed the mirror and smashed it on the floor. I picked out the biggest and sharpest piece, cut off some fabric of my bed linen and wrapped it around the makeshift glass dagger as a handle. A sense of calm came over me now that I had a weapon in hand.

A loud thud and scream resounded from the hallway and I peeked from behind my door. At the start of the hallway, at door number seventy-nine, the insane axe maniac was chopping down the closed door. In only five chops, he brought down the door and made his way into the room. One more scream and thud, and then all was silent but for the other, distant screams coming from somewhere else in the building.

Blood covering his face, clothes and axe, the man exited the room. To my horror, I was too late to pull back and he saw my face peeking out from the doorframe.

“You’re number’s up!” he yelled with that familiar, raspy voice. There was a joy in it, a thirst for blood.

Almost, I locked myself back into my room. No, I reprimanded myself. Run.

I took off in a sprint in the opposite direction and the man cackled as he gave chase.

“Run, little piggy!” he cried out. “Run away from the wolf!”

I cursed as I sprinted down the hallway with no idea on where to go, passing more doors as I went. I reached an intersection and looked left, where to my shock I saw a body on the ground with a woman standing over it, knife in hand. She met my eyes with a joyless smile and dead eyes. Something about her was familiar, but what… Then I realized. The knife. It had been the last thing I’d seen before…

“Piggy!”

I came back to my senses and sprinted down the hallway to the right. With a bit of luck, the axe maniac would run into the woman. I swallowed. The woman who had killed me.

I had died.

The full realization hit me like a brick and I almost collapsed. Somehow I was certain it hadn’t been a dream. I had died.

And then I had woken up again. In the exact same place.

Would it happen again?

Footsteps behind me snapped me back from my thoughts and I turned. The knife-wielding woman was slowly walking towards me, an axe in her other hand. Had she…?

Run, I reminded myself. My little glass dagger was of little use here. I continued my run down to the hallway and much to my relief, the woman didn’t seem interested in going any faster than an old man’s pace at the shopping mall while browsing the liquor shelves.

I passed others as I ran, but to my relief none of them seemed interested in killing me. On the contrary, they seemed equally shocked as I was. More than once I passed by a mutilated body and I did my best to avoid letting my eyes rest on them.

For the first time since hearing them, I remembered the words that had accompanied the chiming of the bell. There is but one exit, which will open once only three of you remain. Would the killings continue until only three people were left? And why three people? Why was all of this even happening?

Had anyone even tried finding and opening the door to the outside? I couldn’t help but snicker at the thought. A snicker that turned into a grunt as I rounded a corner and found myself face to face with an incoming sword.

I screamed.

And I woke up.