Roy tries to open his eye; however, he struggles due to the merciless sunlight, a blaze that pierces through his eyelids like needles. He squints, then rapidly blinks, his eyelashes fluttering like broken shutters against the glare.
Beneath him, he can feel the gravel biting into his cheek and palms, jagged, sharp and bloody. His cheek stings as he lifts his head slightly to relieve the pressure, and his palm throbs with a dull ache, as if it's been scraped raw. There's blood, but not enough to explain the pain.
As if he had fallen, but he didn't. He was lying on the road.
He doesn't know where he is, and he doesn't know how he ended up here, but everything around him feels familiar in a way that unsettles him. Like a childhood memory distorted by time. The buildings, the layout, even the air; it's all recognisable but wrong.
This isn't a dream. It's too vivid. Too heavy. The silence feels deliberate, like the world is holding its breath for him.
Why does he think it's for him? He doesn't know. He just does. It's a certainty that blooms in his chest like a parasite.
He pushes himself up slowly, blinking against the pale light. The road stretches out in both directions, cracked and faded. He was on the edge of the town centre; it was as if time itself had forgotten to maintain it.
He started walking, nowhere in particular; it was better to not stay still.
Buildings loomed like silent sentinels, their facades peeling and blistered. Faded posters clung to walls like ghosts of a forgotten era, windows dark and doors closed. No cars, no people and weirdly no sound.
It was as if the people of this town all disappeared into thin air. Pure silence.
Roy brushed off the dust from his clothes. The air is still, unnaturally so. Even the wind seems to have abandoned this place.
He hears footsteps.
Each step echoes louder than it should, bouncing off empty walls and deserted streets. He passes a fast food store; the neon lights are flickering.
He entered the town centre, pure emptiness, a large clock tower still standing tall like a monument to time itself, trees that are untamed and the silence was deafening.
Everything feels…wrong. Very wrong.
Every atom in Roy's body is telling him there was something incredibly rocky and ragged textured; he then feels an attraction toward a pair of benches behind it.
There was a freshly dropped ice cream with a swirl of pale red and brown on the floor; it was still whole.
Someone was eating ice cream just a moment ago.
Yet there was no one in sight, no noise being made, and no smell of humans. As if abandoned in mere seconds.
Roy finds a note pinned to a lamppost. The paper was yellow with ink smeared all over it.
Roy was just barely able to read it: "You're not supposed to be here."
Was this trying to tell him something?
He frowns, pocketing the note. "Well, no shit, Sherlock."
A few steps later, he hears crackles. It was behind the bench. There was a broken radio barely hanging on to life, its casing cracked and wires exposed, whispering static. He leans in to hear if anything it is saying is audible.
Among that static sound, a voice crackles through; it was a man's voice, sounding very urgent, trembling while speaking.
"∷𝙹||... if you're hearing this, do not find the door, do not open the door, do not look through the door, if you do. DON'T LOOK FORWARD…"
Roy's pulse quickens. He quickly moves away from the radio and walks the other way, trying to get away from it.
Roy didn't want anything related to whatever was happening. He wanted out.
He starts moving faster, scanning the town for anything out of place, instinctively, due to listening to what that man said.
A mural on a wall shows a figure with no face. He was in the park.
The park was eerily symmetrical, with trees spaced evenly and paths looping back on themselves.
His heart slowly began to race, then in the middle of the park.
He sees it. A door.
Standing alone in the middle of the park. No frame. No building. Just a simple door.
Wooden, cracked and still standing strong. He approaches it, his hands trembling.
He hears footsteps.
He genuinely wants to open it, just to have a little peek, but knowing how stories work, he doesn't want to open it.
He goes behind the door to see if there is anything; there is nothing.
His sense of flight or fight skyrocketed.
He chose Flight. He ran from the park, back to the town centre.
Everywhere he looked, on a building, was a wooden door. His heart was rampaging. There were doors everywhere, looking at him. He doesn't want to do anything with this anymore; he wants to run away.
He wanted to be free from whatever was happening. When he looked back.
There was a door standing in front of him. He falls onto the floor, crawling backwards away from it.
He wasn't afraid of the door; he was afraid of what was behind it.
But deeper within him was this curiosity, this wanting to know what was behind it.
He stood up, and his hand approached the handle trembling.
He opens it.
There was a large corridor, lit with hanging lanterns, humming with unseen energy. It was fire, but what lit them?
The walls pulse energy, and the air smells like ozone and dust.
He walks in.
As he walks further in, the large corridor feels narrower than it originally was. Is Roy making it up? Was he hallucinating?
As he walks further, he occasionally turns behind to look back.
He carries on walking. Time feels elastic. On the floor he finds a message: "You are close. But you're not alone."