Wrong Door

You don’t belong here.

If you could turn away, take back any foolish acts that dragged you here, you would. But you’ve already prayed and begged in vain, then shouted curses into the air, unheard; even if you could do the impossible, you’d probably still end up trapped here.

There’s no escape.

You have been running for your life for hours. You have been forced to solve simple and complex puzzles to escape one nightmare, just to enter another. You have been dropped into numerous landscapes, sometimes literally. You have seen things that shouldn’t exist. You have seen places that make no sense.

You’ve seen it all and more, and it’s still not over.

It won’t end.

Your flashlight shakes; you can’t stop trembling. Everything in you screams you shouldn’t continue. You don’t want to move forward, but you can’t stay still or go back. You’re boxed in, trapped, awaiting more torment.

You can’t take much more of this.

You’ll die here.

The room is dark and massive, a hole in its center. From it, lights protrude. You investigate; it’s deeper than you thought, a vertical tunnel illuminated with lights until suddenly they stop, leaving only darkness. You notice sublevels but the danger lurking within is difficult to predict.

An elevator awaits you. Having no other choice, you step onto it and descend into the horrors that await.

The first sublevel looks relatively normal, a harmless maze.

As you step off the elevator, you find that your flashlight is no longer in your hand, replaced with a camera that has a photo attached. You’re distraught; you’ve grown so tired of this.

Nonetheless, the puzzle is self-explanatory; you leave this sublevel unharmed but troubled, after taking two photos and discovering that the attached one keeps changing per picture taken. It unsettles you further, though not as much as the false sense of security that this sublevel has given you.

There’s no escape but—

Sublevel two is a nightmare, although the layout’s the same but with a blue hue; you take the first photo with no incident, but then, you’re forced to seek out the monster for the second.

You find it; a wired skeletal humanoid, which you’ve dealt with several times already. It still brings forth your fear when it breaks the silence by screeching. You don’t pinpoint exactly where it’s at; you’re too busy sprinting away to avoid being killed. It gives chase and you manage to take a quick photo, but you get lost in the maze because of your panic.

By some miracle, you make it out.

Unlucky. Unlucky. Unlucky.

The final sublevel is torture, somehow worse than the nightmare that was sublevel two. Although the layout remains the same, it’s completely dark. You face disembodied smiley face creatures, which you too have dealt with before; they’re stopped by light, so you frequently take pictures.

You should feel relieved that the idea of using the flash works, but there’s so many of them and you keep getting thrown into the darkness for too many seconds at a time.

Then, you turn a corner.

“Excuse me?”

You only get a glimpse of the person standing nearby before you run the opposite direction. Behind you, you hear the creature shed its human disguise, growling as it gives chase. Your heart never stops racing. You never stop running.

Like before, after a normal photo, you have to take one of the monster chasing after you. Only this one runs about as fast as you; you stop for a moment, it’s over.

You manage to successfully take the photo by pointing the camera backwards from over your head.

Then, you take the elevator back up. And you notice an opening in the ceiling. Was it there before? How come you didn’t notice?

It's not over.

In this new area, the ground is covered in weeds. Double doors are directly ahead. You don’t hesitate; you sprint to them and go inside.

You drop.

But you don’t drop into another puzzle with another monster.

You fall out of the sky, back in reality.

You scream. You cry.

You get closer to the ground. You close your eyes.

And you die.

There’s no escape but death.