This Isn't Target Anymore

The room was vacant. The wall paper peeling off the walls. All that remained was a rusted school chair on its side and a man in the center of the room, unconscious.

A sharp crack splits through the air seeming… distant, but unmistakable. The sound travels with a hollow echo, as if it bounced down a long hallway before reaching him. It starts with a sudden burst of force, then fades quickly into a dull reverberation, like a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence you didn’t hear. For a moment afterward, the quiet feels heavier, as though the space itself is listening for what might come next.

The man stirred awake. After a few moments of feeling disoriented, he sat up to examine his surroundings. How had he ended up here? The last thing he had remembered was walking into a Target before closing. Maybe…he somehow wandered into one of the storage rooms? He knew how impossible the thought was but it could be possible. Right?

Clearly I need to find my way out of this store. The man carefully walked around the room, making his way to the door. He put his hand on the knob. The metal was almost cold to the touch. Quickly, he pulled the door towards him, trying his best to ignore the loud creaking sound. He glanced at the door as the chilling breeze rushed in and he froze for a moment.

The door looked destroyed. Claw marks all over, and these weren’t just any ordinary claw marks.

Even Bear – my mastiff – couldn’t reach this far up the door. But…these marks are all over the place. Doesn't look like anything i’ve ever seen. These look almost human but..more demented. No human could possibly have hands this big…God. No. Get yourself together Ty.

He suddenly slapped his hands to his cheeks.

I can’t sit here and dwell on the many possibilities. I need to find my way out of here or at least find an employee of some kind.

Ty stepped out of the room and drew a slow breath. The air tasted stale—thick with dust and something older, something sour. The space beyond was in ruins. Bookshelves leaned at broken angles, collapsed into each other like a chain reaction frozen in time. A gray film coated everything. After maneuvering around the bookshelves he tilted his head.

Hallways.

Not just one, but three, splitting off in different directions like the entrance to a maze.

Ty hesitated. “What the hell…?”

He was slow with each step he took and walked across the large room. Ty hesitated as he drew closer. The hallways didn’t feel random. They felt arranged. Not neatly because nothing about this place was neat but deliberately. Like something had taken the idea of a store layout and twisted it into something else. Something meant to confuse. He swallowed and chose the leftmost hallway. Before entering fully, he looked behind him, having this odd feeling. As if he was being watched.

It’s nothing, I need to get moving.

The hallway he chose was narrow. The walls pressed closer the further he went, shelves jutting out at uneven angles, forcing him to turn sideways at times. His shoulder brushed against something soft. He flinched back.

Fabric.

Clothing is still hanging on a bent rack. He ran his fingers across it. The material crumbled slightly, dry with age, leaving a faint residue on his skin.

“How long…?” he muttered. A faint sound answered him. Ty froze, turning his head ever so slightly.

And then it came again.

A slow, heavy dragging…like something being pulled across the floor. A quick pause then continued. As if it was moving around a corner.

He held his breath, straining to listen. He couldn’t tell how far or how close it was. The sound stopped. Silence settled in again but not the same silence as before. This silence felt… aware of him. Without a thought, Ty took a quick step through the clothing rack to continue forward. His foot came into contact with something on the ground, causing it to scrape across the floor. He held in a sharp breath.The dragging sound returned instantly. Although this time it sounded closer.

His chest tightened. “Nope,” he whispered, shaking his head. “Nope, nope. I’m out. ” He paused and turned back the way he came, forcing himself not to run immediately. But as he headed back the way he came he noticed another hall in this room that had not been there when he first entered. Should he risk the new path?

Something shifted behind him. A sudden thud against a shelf. Metal rattled. The old rack clattered to the ground. He knew If he turned around to look he would be dead.

Without a second to weigh his options, he took off down the new hallway. This hallway seemed longer, stretching as he continued to push forward. His shoulder slammed into a shelf; something toppled behind him, almost causing him to fall but he couldn't stop to look now. He had to keep going.

He burst through into a new room. As quick as he could he looked around, looking for a place to hide. After noticing the beat up row of tall lockers, he hopped in one as quietly as he could.

Silence.

No dragging.

No movement. Just the dust-filling air and the outdated shelves staring back at him. Ty bent his knees the best he could in the locker, trying to steady his breathing.

…Okay, he thought between gasps. Okay. So we don’t go back that way.

A faint click echoed somewhere in the room. Ty slowly straightened.

There was another door in this room, leading towards the unexplored. The handle had moved slightly, something pushing the door open. But this was different.

He didn’t see a hand on the door knob, just a void in the doorway. As he stared, something shifted within the darkness. Not a shape exactly…more like the absence of one, peeling itself away from the black.

And then…

A hand.

Long. shadowy.

It wrapped slowly around the edge of the door, fingers stretching just a little too far, joints bending just a little too irregular. Ty didn’t breathe. He was too scared. The fingers tightened and the thing began to pull itself into view. This… creature was over 8ft tall. It was slender, long arms, hands the size of his head. Probably bigger honestly. The swirling white pools in its sockets cast a faint, sickly glow, scanning the room with predatory intent. Despite its size, the creature made no sound other than that rhythmic dragging. No breath.

It stalked into the room, hunched over as he was too tall for the room. The hands dragged along the floor. The door slamming shut behind it. The creature didn't move like a living thing; it moved like a glitch in reality. Its long, spindly limbs twitch with a rhythmic, mechanical wrongness. Every time those massive, wispy hands scraped the floor, the sound set Ty’s teeth on edge—a dry, rasping noise like sandpaper on bone.

Ty stood paralyzed, the metal of the locker pressing into his back like an icy shroud. Through the thin vertical slats of the locker door, the world was reduced to narrow, flickering strips of nightmare.

Where in the world am I?

As the entity drifted closer to the row of lockers, Ty noticed something that made his blood run cold. Hanging all over this thing's body were..Polaroids. Of people…screaming. Where are they employees? Others that had gotten lost here? He couldn’t really make out specifics about the photos from this distance. Just that they looked to be captured in the exact moment they experienced the most terrifying event of their lives. Forcing anyone who gazed upon them to experience an extra feeling of dread. This place wasn't just a maze; This place was a trap. How many of these things were out there? Surely this wasn't the one he heard in the first hallway he was in. Was there any hope of getting out of here?

The creature stopped. Its head tilted at a sharp, unnatural angle, centering those swirling white eyes directly on Ty’s locker. It leaned in, the tip of a finger—sharp and wispy—beginning to trace the edge of the locker door. Ty released the breath he held since this thing entered the room. He needed to make a move. He would not fall victim to this creature like the others have before him. It was now or never.

3…

2…

1…

Ty suddenly kicked the locker door open with all his might to stun the creature and sprint for the door it just entered through. Once through the door he was blind, unable to see where he was going. After stumbling over several items of debris, he was unaware of the floor below him. Ty took a blind step and fell. But he didn't land on the floor like a person would normally do, he kept falling. He screamed through the void, as if he had fallen several stories. The last thing he saw was a light that he was gradually getting closer to.

A vile crunch echoed through the void as the light seemed to adjust towards him.

Back on the floor he fell from, the creature leaned over examining the whole Ty fell through. The thing tilted his head, watching, waiting for any signs of life. After a few moments, down by his waist… a light buzzing noise and a new polaroid appeared. A photo of Ty in absolute fear. It captured his wide, screaming eyes, the wind blowing his hair back as he plummeted to his end.

Ty shot up, screaming. After giving himself a few minutes to stabilize his breathing, he noticed something strange. He was back in the first room he started in..everything looked the same except this time he was strapped in a bed and the door had a small window.

What in the world is going on here? Where am I now? I thought I...