Trapped

The first thing Evelyn noticed was the smell.

Not blood. Not mildew. Not the copper stink of the rust-coated pipes running along the ceiling.

Oranges. Bright, sweet citrus, impossibly fresh, drifting through the darkness in soft waves.

It made no sense.

She opened her eyes slowly. Her apartment ceiling hovered above her, familiar and water-stained. The glow-in-the-dark stars she'd stuck there at nineteen still clung stubbornly to the plaster.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. 3:11 a.m.

Again.

Evelyn sat up too quickly, nausea rolling through her stomach. Her room tilted. For a second, the walls seemed to breathe inward like lungs.

No. Not again.

She pressed her palms against her eyes until stars burst behind them.

"You're awake," a voice whispered.

She jerked toward the corner... Nothing there.

Only laundry draped over a chair.

The digital clock changed. 3:12

The smell of oranges thickened.

Evelyn stumbled out of bed and flicked on the light.

The bulb exploded.

Glass rained onto the carpet.

She screamed and backed into the hallway.

"Mom?" She called instinctively.

Silence answered. That made her chest begin to tighten harder in the darkness.

Her mother had been dead for eight years... but lately, Evelyn kept forgetting that. Or remembering it twice.

Sometimes she'd make coffee for two before realizing halfway through pouring that there was no one else in the apartment. Other times she would swear she heard her mother coughing in the next room, wet and ragged from the cancer that had hollowed her out.

The therapist called it grief recurrence.

The neurologist called it stress-induced dissociation.

The woman in the mirror called it something else entirely.

You're slipping.

The hallway stretched longer than it should have. Her apartment was tiny. Five steps from the bedroom to the kitchen.

Tonight, it took fifteen.

Family photos lined the wall. Except the faces had changed.

Evelyn froze.

Every picture contained her alone.

At Disney World... Alone. At graduation... Alone. Christmas morning... Alone, beside a half-decorated tree.

Her breathing quickened. "No," she whispered.

She grabbed one frame. The glass felt warm.

In the picture, her mother smiled faintly from the couch.

Relief crashed through Evelyn so hard her knees weakened.

Then the woman's smile widened...

Wider... Too wide.

Teeth pressed against the edges of her cheeks like they were trying to escape. The eyes turned toward Evelyn. Not toward the camera... Toward her. The photograph trembled violently inside her hands.

A wet cracking sound came from inside the frame.

Evelyn dropped it. The glass shattered.

Long strands poured from the broken frame in twisting knots.

The lights in the kitchen flickered on.

Someone stood there...

Tall.

Back turned.

Bare feet.

Water dripped steadily onto the tile.

"Mom?" Evelyn whispered.

The figure twitched. Bones cracked softly beneath skin.

The head tilted too far sideways. "You left me there."

The voice sounded layered, like several mouths speaking at once beneath water.

Evelyn backed away. "I didn't..."

"You LEFT ME."

The figure spun.

Its face was smooth. No eyes. No nose. No mouth.

Only skin stretched taut over a human shape.

Except for one thing...

A smile carved from ear to ear. Not cut into the skin...

Underneath it. As though something inside was trying to claw its way out.

Evelyn ran.

The apartment door slammed open before she reached it.

Cold rain hit her face. She sprinted into the parking lot barefoot, choking on panic.

The world outside looked wrong.

Cars sat abandoned with doors hanging open.

Streetlights buzzed violently...

No people. No sound except rain and distant metallic groaning.

The sky pulsed faintly red. Like a heartbeat behind clouds.

Evelyn doubled over beside her car, fumbling for her keys.

Something moved beneath the windshield.

She screamed!

A man stared at her from inside the backseat.

Thin. Pale. Bald. Hospital gown hanging open at the chest.

His eyes were sewn shut... but he smiled as though he could still see her perfectly.

Tap.

Tap. Tap.

His fingernails drummed against the glass. "Wake up," he mouthed.

The car alarm exploded into noise.

Evelyn stumbled backward into the street.

Headlights flooded her vision.

Impact.

Pain erupted through her ribs.

Then...

Darkness.

She woke strapped to a chair.

A television hissed static in front of her.

The room smelled strongly of bleach and oranges.

There it was again... that damned smell.

Her wrists burned against the leather restraints.

"What the hell?"

The TV flickered... A home video appeared.

A little girl at a birthday party.

Yellow dress. Gap-toothed smile. Evelyn.

Her stomach dropped. Behind the camera, her mother laughed.

"Blow out the candles, Evie."

The child leaned forward.

Paused.

Slowly turned toward the camera. Toward Evelyn.

The little girl's smile vanished. "She knows now," the child whispered.

Static swallowed the screen. A door creaked open behind her.

Footsteps...

Slow.

Dragging...

Evelyn fought her restraints violently.

"Who's there?!"

No answer.

Only breathing... Wet breathing...

The footsteps circled her chair.

She could feel someone standing inches behind her head.

Then...

"You made us up." A man's voice. Calm. Almost gentle.

Evelyn twisted hard enough to see him.

The bald man from the car...

Except now, his eyes were open. And ruined.

Cloudy white cataracts stared in different directions.

Electrodes hung to his scalp.

A hospital bracelet hung from his wrist.

He crouched beside her. "You built a whole life to hide from this place."

"What place?"

His expression faltered with pity.

"That's the problem."

The room flickered. Not the lights... reality itself.

Like a corrupted video.

For one split second, Evelyn saw another room layered over this one:

Metal walls.

Medical equipment.

A stained mattress.

People strapped to beds.

Then it vanished.

She started shaking. "No..."

"You've been under for a very long time."

The man touched the side of her head carefully.

"Every time you started to wake up, you forced yourself deeper."

The smell of oranges became unbearable.

Chemical. Not fruit. Something medicinal.

Memories slammed into her all at once.

Masks over faces.

Needles.

Hands pinning her down.

A voice saying: Increase dosage.

"No!"

"You weren't sick," the man whispered. "You volunteered."

The room warped again. This time it stayed longer.

Rust-colored walls.

Industrial lights.

Rows of restrained people twitching in beds.

Machines pumping fluorescent liquid through tubes.

Some patients screaming. Some laughing... Some perfectly still.

Evelyn's heart nearly stopped.

She recognized them!

Every "person" from her life.

Her coworkers. Her neighbors. Her therapist. All here. All connected.

Dreaming.

"You said the world outside was dying," the bald man continued. "You said that consciousness migration was humanity's future."

Fragments returned in brutal flashes.

A laboratory.

Protests outside.

Fear of famine, war, and climate collapse.

Project Somnus.

Digital sedation therapy.

Escape reality by building a better one inside the mind.

"We were supposed to wake up after a week," he said.

"How long?"

His silence answered first.

Then... "Fourteen years."

Her stomach twisted violently. "No. That's impossible!"

"You forgot this place on purpose."

The lights overhead began strobing.

Alarms wailed somewhere far away.

The bald man looked upward fearfully.

"They know you're conscious."

"Who?"

He opened his mouth...

A deafening metallic shriek cut him off.

Something slammed against the other side of the door.

Once.

Twice.

Again.

The entire frame bent inward. The man stumbled back.

"They can't let people wake up anymore."

"What are you talking about?"

Another impact.

A crack split down the center of the steel door.

Through it, Evelyn saw fingers probing inward.

Too many fingers. Jointed wrong.

The bald man hurried to unstrap her wrists. "They changed after the network collapse."

"Who changed?"

"The caretakers."

The final restraint snapped free.

The door burst open.

Something unfolded itself into the room.

It had once been human. Maybe.

Its limbs were impossibly long, bending in reverse at the joints. Medical tubing hung from its spine like entrails. Multiple surgical masks had been stapled over where its face should've been, all fluttering as it breathed wetly beneath them.

Evelyn backed into the television.

The creature tilted its head.

Then every mask split open simultaneously.

Rows of human teeth chattered underneath.

"PATIENT STABILITY FAILURE," it screeched.

The bald man grabbed Evelyn's arm. "RUN!"

They bolted through the opposite door into a corridor flooded with red emergency light. Evelyn nearly collapsed.

The facility stretched endlessly underground.

Hundreds of beds lined the halls.

Bodies sleeping. Dreaming.

Some looked skeletal with age despite the machines preserving them.

Others stared awake at the ceiling, unable to move, tears streaming into their hair.

"Jesus..."

The bald man pulled her forward. "Don't look too long. Sometimes they see you back."

Behind them, the creature skittered through the hallway ceiling like a spider.

PATIENT CONSCIOUSNESS DEVIATION

PATIENT CONSCIOUSNESS DEVIATION

Its voice echoed from hidden speaker now.

More creatures emerged ahead.

Nurses, Doctors, Orderlies... or what had become of them.

Their bodies stretched and fused with machinery after years inside the failing system.

Evelyn blacked out briefly while running.

When her vision returned, she was somewhere else entirely.

A sunny grocery store...

Soft music playing overhead.

A woman offering free orange samples.

Evelyn screamed!

Shoppers turned calmly toward her in perfect synchronization.

All smiling too wide.

The bald man shook her violently.

"Stay awake!"

The illusion shattered.

Back in the corridor... Blood poured from Evelyn's nose.

"You're slipping into the construct again."

"I can't..."

"Yes, you can!"

The creatures closed in.

Metal limbs scraping... Masks chattering...

Evelyn saw a glowing exit sign ahead.

Hope exploded through her chest!

They slammed through the door... And stopped.

Not outside. A room.

Small, windowless, one hospital bed, one chair, one IV stand...

On the bed lay a woman.

Thin, grey-haired, comatose.

Evelyn stared.

The woman's face looked familiar.

Horribly familiar...

"Oh God..."

"You finally found her."

The woman in the bed was Evelyn.

Older by decades...

Her real body.

Machines clinked steadily around her.

The version of herself standing here touched her wrinkled hand and recoiled. "Impossible..."

Fourteen years... Gone.

Outside the room, the creatures approached slowly.

The bald man stepped back toward the hallway.

"You waking up destabilized the system."

"What happens now?"

His expression hollowed. "You tell me."

The old Evelyn in the bed suddenly inhaled sharply.

Her eyes opened.

And the younger Evelyn standing beside the bed woke up screaming in the passenger seat of a wrecked car beneath a blood-red sky.

Rain hammered the windshield.

The air smelled like oranges.

And outside the glass, dozens of smiling people stood silently in the road, waiting for her to fall asleep again.