Serialized Story: Reality Check Part 2: Level 1

Part 2: Level 1

Chapter 2: New Findings

At this point, my nerves were still haywire from the shock of waking up to an unfamiliar place, my interactions with the figure, and straight up fear of the unknown. The figures' quick reappearance shook my senses even more. My hands were shaking, my breath ragged, and my body felt like jello. I hadn’t heard any sound coming from the other rooms since I stepped out into the hallway, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t danger beyond what I currently saw. In the room where I had woken up, there was safety in knowing that there were four walls and a door between me and the outside, but danger could have been around any corner.

I took a deep breath, took one step further into the hallway, and released my fingers from the door. I felt the free-falling panic in my chest rising back into my lungs. My heartbeat rose quickly, and I began to shake again. I was having trouble breathing! I fell sideways towards the wall on the right as the space around me started to blank again. I thought I was going to hit the wall, but I threw my arms out before the impact. The ragged breaths and shakes continued to come while I hunched against the wall to stop myself from falling over again. After a minute, I stood up straighter with my back to the hallway, placed my head against the cold wall, and tried to recompose myself enough to breathe and think clearer.

The sensation of fear was pulling away from my body. I felt my lungs filling with air again. The shakes stopped tormenting my body. I felt the wall; it was a true-tactile object that I could count on to hold me up when I didn’t trust myself to do it alone. The realization hit me that the wall in front of me wasn’t concrete, so I stepped back in alarm. There was a door completely made out of metal in front of me; it wasn’t the only one!

I saw five other metal doors leading down the right side of the corridor. It was odd, each door had a chalkboard with a name written on it. The names written on the boards were Astrid, Benji, CeCe, Erik, and Daniel. Who were these kids? Where were they now? My curiosity of who these other kids were gnawed at me to open the metal door. I was about to open the door when I heard another wailing shriek from somewhere in the compound. I assumed this place was a compound because of the number of rooms in this hallway. People must have been here, which meant there must be food somewhere.

My stomach gurgled like the noise of an emptying garbage disposal that assured me I needed to eat, or I wasn’t going to have the energy to explore, find a way out, and possibly go back to wherever I had come from. This was not going to be easy. What laid inside these rooms intrigued me, but my stomach was starting to hurt. I didn’t know when the last time I had eaten food or drank any water. This place must have a cafeteria or vending machines somewhere. The more I looked at this place, it appeared to me like a hospital. They always had food stashed for patients and guests. I don’t know how I knew that, but I felt like that statement was true.

I regained my composure and stood facing the hallway with my back towards the room I woke in. The hallway walls were a sterile white color overlaid with the brightness from the dome lights overhead. To my left, there was a short hallway that led to a metal door at the end; only about a short distance between me and the door. To my right, were the doors of five kids who seemingly disappeared without a trace. I thought to myself if their rooms gave away any hints as to where they went, where they came from, or why they had deserted? Directly in front of me, I found yet another metal door that blocked my way out into the wider scope of the compound. I decided the best course of action was to walk up and down this hallway, searching, until I found something useful.

I started my way down the hallway by peering into the nurse’s station, it was declared on the front of the desk. From the other side of the hallway, near the room I woke up in, I couldn’t tell what lay on the desk, but as I got closer, I noticed a faint blinking red light. I looked over the desk to see if there were any devices that could be useful, but all I saw was an empty trash can, a printer machine with no paper in the basket, and a small black cube. It was possible that the small black cube was a fridge with food inside or maybe it just had medical supplies in it. I was hoping for the latter, food and maybe medication to calm my nerves. I tried to open the door to the room, but the door wouldn’t budge. I saw the blinking red light in the middle of the desk. It called me to press it. I didn’t know what it would do or release if I hit it. Whatever action the button set off had to be better than staying stuck in this small hallway forever.

The thought of food grasped my body again. I wanted to know what was in the cube and what the blinking red light meant. I gave it my best effort to climb over the top of the desk. The desk’s counter was too tall for me, only the upper half of my body was able to make it over. I was also still weak from the frights of the last hours.

I leaned over the desktop as far as I could before I climbed back down. I realized a computer was in the small room. It had been hidden in a wide cubby under the counter. I believed that there would be information on the hard drive related to why I had woken up here, more about the other teens, and where they and the staff went. If I wanted to get inside the nurse’s station to look at the computer, I was going to need another way other than high jumping over the desk. While I struggled to pull myself back off the desk, my fingers wrapped underneath the counter. The red blinking light stopped, and then another blinking light appeared, this one blue. There was a click from down the hall. I didn’t know what just happened, but I was excited to think that somewhere in this hallway a door opened, which meant more areas to explore.

From where I stood, there appeared no way to get into the booth, so I moved on down the hallway to investigate the clicking noise. I hoped that it was one of the doors at the end, because even though I had broken through the first barrier of my mental, physical, and emotional stress by leaving the first room, a lot more progress would need to be made to survive my situation.

** I hope you like the second chapter of Reality Check. Part 3 will be coming out shortly, and our main character will be exploring the noises she hears while looking into the nurse's station. What will she discover in the next chapter of her adventure?

Link to my poem: "Words"

https://vocal.media/poets/words-cfaw3l0f9g