The door slams shut with the force of a gunshot.
And the lights go out.
It’s like the world just ceased to exist. A thick, liquid blackness that seems to stick to my retinas. I hold my hand in front of my face. I can’t see it. I can’t see anything. Usually, the blue glow of my interface is enough to light up my fingers, but here, there’s nothing. The menu floats in the void but projects zero light onto reality. It’s as if the darkness is swallowing photons at the source.
“Kim? Chris?” I call out.
“I’m blind!” Kim screams somewhere to my left. Her voice, usually so cold and controlled, goes up an octave. “My night vision isn’t activating! I can’t see the end of my barrel! I can’t aim!”
“Uncle Ben!”
Two arms violently grab my waist. Chris. He’s shaking so hard his leather armor sounds like a pair of castanets.
“It’s dark, Uncle Ben… It’s too dark… I can’t… I can’t breathe…”
I feel his panic infecting me. I hate it. I’m a man of logic, a visual guy. Without my eyes, I’m just a piece of meat in the dark. And more importantly, my hands are full. I’ve got a shovel in my right hand and this damn trash lid in my left. I can’t lead anyone like this.
“Calm down!” I order, trying to keep my voice steady. “It’s the floor’s mechanic. Total blackout. We stay grouped.”
I nudge Chris with my elbow. “Kid, I need a free hand. Take my shield. Stuff it in your dimensional inventory, but keep it ready to ‘pop’ into my hand the second I ask for it.”
I feel Chris fumbling, his fingers meeting the cold metal of my lid. A second later, the weight vanishes from my left arm.
“It’s done…” he whispers.
“Good. Now, Chris, let go of my waist and hold my left hand firmly. Kim, you grab my right shoulder, the one holding the shovel. Don’t let go for any reason.”
I feel Kim’s hand tighten on my shoulder. Her nails dig into my jacket. She’s terrified. A blind sniper is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.
“We’re moving,” I say. “Slowly. I’m probing the ground with the shovel.”
Tap. Tap.
I hit the floor in front of me. Stone. Nothing but stone.
We advance into this oppressive void. One step. Two steps. The silence is absolute, only broken by the wheezing breath of Chris who’s on the verge of hyperventilating.
Suddenly, I feel it.
It’s a shift in the air. Something just passed right in front of my face.
I stop dead. “There’s something here,” I whisper.
“What? What do you see?” Kim asks, her rifle clicking nervously.
“Nothing. But it moved.”
Fffffffff.
A breath. Ice-cold. Damp. It just brushed the back of my neck. Right behind my ear. The hair on my arms stands up instantly.
I whip around, sweeping the void with my shovel in a wide circular motion.
Whoosh.
Nothing. I hit nothing but air.
“Dammit!” I curse. “There’s something behind us!”
“Ow!” Chris suddenly screams. He leaps to the side, nearly knocking all three of us down. “What?! What happened?!”
“Something touched my leg! It was cold! Like… like dead fingers! It tried to grab my ankle!”
“I can’t see anything! I can’t see anything!” Kim panics, swinging her rifle in every direction, nearly knocking me out with the barrel.
The stress levels crank up another notch.
Click.
The sound is sharp. It’s the sound of a mechanism engaging. Right next to my ear. Like the hammer of a revolver being cocked. Or a bear trap being set.
I freeze, not daring to breathe.
Schiiing.
The sound of a blade being slowly drawn from a leather sheath. It’s right there. I can almost feel the cold metal against my skin.
“Get down!” I scream, throwing myself to the floor.
The three of us crash onto the cold tiles, waiting for the impact, the explosion, the decapitation.
A second passes. Ten seconds.
Nothing. Zero pain. Not a drop of blood.
Just silence. Total, crushing silence. It feels like the darkness is a physical weight on the back of my neck, pinning me to the floor.
“What was that?” Chris whispers, his voice trembling. “I heard a blade…”
I ignore his question to focus and strain my ears. The mechanical sound of the click and the blade has vanished. But it’s been replaced by something else. Infinitely more subtle.
Another breath.
Slow. Deep. It’s coming from the walls themselves. Like the whole room is breathing.
“Up,” I mutter, my heart pounding in my chest. “Slowly. Back to back.”
We stand up in a chorus of rustling leather and metallic clinks that sound deafening in this calm.
We form a fragile triangle in the void. I hold my shovel like a baseball bat, ready to swing at the nothingness.
“It’s getting hot…” Kim whispers.
I frown. She’s right. The temperature jumped several degrees in a few seconds. The air turned muggy, sticky. A rancid smell—a mix of copper and old dampness—starts to saturate my nostrils.
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“There’s something…” Chris starts again, on the verge of hysterics. “Right in front of me. I feel… I feel heat.”
“It’s your imagination, kid. Just breathe.”
“No! It’s hot! Like… like someone has their face pressed against mine!”
I reach out my left hand toward Chris to reassure him, but my fingers don’t meet his shoulder. They pass through a zone of ice-cold air, then…
I touch something.
It’s cold. Wet. Like raw meat straight out of the fridge.
I pull my hand back like I’ve been burned. “Shit… I touched something.”
“What? What was it?” Kim asks, her rifle waving in the dark.
“I don’t know.”
Fffffttt.
The sound of fabric rustling. Right behind me. Like a sleeve brushing against my jacket. I pivot violently, sweeping the air with my shovel.
Nothing. Just the whistle of my weapon cutting through the void.
But the movement shifted the air, and the smell is becoming unbearable. It smells like dust and disturbed earth.
“We aren’t alone…” Chris whimpers. “I hear them moving…”
And then, I hear it too. Hundreds of tiny cracks, faint, like joints snapping. Crack. Creak. Crack. It’s coming from everywhere.
The space is packed. I feel a presence. A crowd. I feel like I’m in a packed subway car at rush hour, but a subway filled with silent things watching us.
“Ben…” Kim’s voice is terrified. It’s the first time I’ve heard her like this. “Ben… don’t move your left arm.”
“Why?”
“Because… something is passing between us. I feel… I feel hair. Or threads. It’s brushing my hand. It’s long… it’s greasy…”
I freeze. I actually feel something light caressing the back of my hand. It’s sickeningly soft.
“Don’t shoot,” I whisper. “Whatever you do, don’t shoot. If you miss, you hit us.”
“I can’t… it’s touching me… it’s climbing up my arm…”
“Get it off me!” Chris suddenly screams. “GET IT OFF!”
“What?!”
“He’s holding my ankle! He’s squeezing! It’s cold! It’s cold!”
We hear the sound of a struggle, Chris kicking frantically, his boots scraping the floor. “Let go of me! LET GO!”
“Chris! Calm down!”
But panic is a virus, and Chris is patient zero. In the absolute blackness, Chris’s imagination has just drawn the worst kind of abomination, and he’s decided to fight.
“GET BACK!” He takes a massive swing with his sword into the void. I feel the shift in air as the blade passes inches from my nose.
“Chris, stop! You’re gonna slice us up!”
“THEY’RE ON ME! THEY’RE ON ME!”
Kim snaps. The stress, the blindness, the sensation of that thing on her arm, Chris’s screams… it’s too much.
“GET BACK!” she yells.
I hear the distinct sound of her finger yanking the trigger.
BANG.
The detonation cracks. A sharp, violent noise that tears through our eardrums.
But there’s no flash.
The darkness swallows the muzzle flare before it even exists. We’re blind, and now, with the high-pitched ringing in our ears, we’re almost deaf.
“Did I… did I shoot?” Kim’s trembling voice whispers in the dark.
No one answers.
Silence falls again. A heavy silence.
“Don’t move,” I mutter.
We stay there. Frozen. Three statues of flesh in the void.
A minute passes. Maybe two. In this blackness, time has no meaning. I only hear the wet sound of Chris’s breathing. He’s hyperventilating. Short, ragged inhales. Wheezing exhales. Hhh… Hhh… Hhh…
“Uncle Ben…” Chris moans, on the verge of tears.
“Hush.”
Ssssss…
The sound comes from nowhere and everywhere at once. A sliding noise. Like dry scales rubbing against rough stone. It’s circling us. Far away at first. Then closer.
“… Kill…”
The word is hissed out. An ancient, hissing, hateful voice. It reminds me of a giant snake sliding through the pipes of an old castle.
I feel Kim’s nails dig painfully into my bicep. She’s shaking. The “Pro-Gamer” is gone. Only blind prey remains.
“… The flesh… Tender… Kill…”
The voice shifts from my left to my right in a fraction of a second.
Suddenly, a mechanical noise, sharp and cold.
CLICK.
Right under Chris’s foot. The sound of a pressure trigger. The sound of a mine, or a trapdoor giving way.
Chris freezes, paralyzed. He stops breathing. We wait for the explosion. We wait for the click of the guillotine. We wait for the pain.
One second. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds.
Nothing. Just the darkness pressing against our eyeballs. The waiting is worse than death. Every nerve in my body is stretched to the breaking point, anticipating an impact that doesn’t come. It’s torture.
Then, right by my ear, a warm breath. Putrid. A smell of rotting meat.
“… He he he…”
A child’s laugh. Distorted.
“They’re playing with us,” I whisper, my throat dry as sandpaper.
I take a step forward, fumbling with my shovel. I want to touch a wall. I want to touch something solid. But my shovel only meets empty space. The room seems to have stretched to infinity.
“Don’t let go of me,” I say. “We move forward. Slowly.”
The sound of our boots is absorbed by the soft floor. Suddenly, Kim lets out a small muffled cry and stops dead.
“Kim?”
“Shh… don’t move,” she whispers, terrified.
“What? You see something?”
“No… I feel something right in front of me.”
I imagine it, in the total blackness. Something standing there, an inch from her nose. Something watching her without her being able to see it.
“Back up, Kim. Slowly.”
“I can’t… I feel like if I move… it’ll catch me.”
… Kill …
The voice whispers again. This time, it comes from above. Just above our hair.
… The eyes … Take the eyes …
Something brushes my hair. Light. Like a spiderweb… or long, thin fingers testing the texture of my skull. I take a wide swing above my head. Nothing. Air.
Chris starts crying silently. I feel the shakes of his sobs through his arm gripped to mine. “I want out… I want out… I want out…”
That’s when the sound changes. Scriiitch… Scriiitch… A sound of metal dragging on the floor. Slow. Rhythmic. Something heavy is approaching.
And in this absolute dark, where our wide eyes capture only nothingness, the imagination draws the worst atrocities.
“Ben…” Kim whispers.
“What now?”
“Something… something is holding my hand.”
I freeze. My hand is holding her shoulder. Her left hand is holding her rifle. Her right hand… was hanging in the void.
“Don’t squeeze…” she says, on the verge of hysteria. “It’s small… it’s cold…”
I don’t have time to answer. Suddenly, violently, I feel a massive pull.
Kim isn’t backing up, she’s being pulled upwards.
“BEN!”
Her scream is high-pitched, terrified. I tighten my fingers on her shoulder, but the force carrying her away is colossal. I feel her feet leave the ground. Something caught her by the ankles and is hoisting her toward the ceiling like a ragdoll.
“DON’T LET GO OF ME!” she screams, in tears, her nails clawing into my jacket. “I BEG YOU! DON’T LET GO!”
At the same moment, two ice-cold hands close around my own calves.
“UNCLE BEN!”
Chris. He’s on the ground, dragged backward at an insane speed. He’s grabbing my legs, his fingers sliding on the denim of my jeans.
“THEY’VE GOT ME! HELP ME!”
I’m being torn apart. Kim screaming above my head, pulled into the shadows of the ceiling. Chris screaming at my feet, pulled toward the back of the room. I’m holding the shoulder of one, the hand of the other. I’m the only anchor point. My joints are cracking.
“I can’t…” I grit through clenched teeth.
Kim’s hand slips.
“NO! BEN! AAAAAAH!”
She vanishes into the ceiling, her scream snapping shut. Below, Chris lets go.
“UNCLE BEEEN!”
I find myself alone, arms stretched toward the void.
I don’t think. I don’t calculate. My nephew is my priority. I grab my shovel from the ground at my feet and throw myself forward, running blindly in the direction Chris was dragged.
“CHRIS! I’M COMING!”
I run, stumbling, sweeping the air with my shovel. I expect to hit a wall, a monster, anything. But there’s nothing. The space seems to have expanded. I run for what feels like minutes, screaming his name until my throat is raw. Then, I stop. Out of breath.
Silence. No more screams. No more sounds of struggle. I’m alone.
Despair hits me like a punch to the gut. I’ve lost Chris.
“Dammit… dammit…” I whisper, panic squeezing my throat.
Get it together, damn it. I need to find a solution. Light. A weapon. Anything.
“The Store,” I mutter. “There must be a torch, a flare…”
I open my interface with a gesture. The blue glow of the menu is the only thing that exists in this void, even if it doesn’t light my hands. I look for the cart icon, my eyes blurred by fear. But my gaze drifts. On the side, the Deity chat is scrolling. One line shines brighter than the others, written in golden letters.
[The Goddess of Absolute Purity]: You idiot! Use the Group Chat!
I freeze. “Group chat?”
I scan my interface frantically. Inventory, Status, Store, Map (useless)… I see nothing. And then, I see it. A tiny tab, minuscule, hidden at the very bottom of the drop-down list in [Settings]. An icon that looks like two badly drawn speech bubbles, gray on gray.
“Dammit…” I rage. “Seriously? They hid the group chat at the bottom of the options menu? This is ‘attempted murder by design’! The guy who coded this interface deserves prison.”
I click it. A new window opens. I hold my breath. At the top of the window, two names appear.
- Chris (Porter)
- Kim (Screaming Sentry)
Their names appear as simple, lifeless lines of text on a black background. There’s no mention of Online or a reassuring green color that would indicate they’re nearby. My fingers shake over the holographic keyboard. The silence around me is absolute. I type, my throat so tight I can barely swallow.
[Ben]: “Chris? Kim? Are you there?”