| abstract | - This is the living room. There is a coffee table in the middle that is large, rectangular, and gray. It takes up space, having nothing on it as far as you remembered. The walls are white. That is the default color, after all. There is nothing on the walls. You were never really one to take pictures. As such and by default, the white walls are bare except for the TV that's on and spouting nonsense and the windows with the black curtains drawn. You meant to open them earlier today. You must've forgotten. The gray carpet feels unimpressionable beneath your feet, as it always does. You forget it's there most the time. Such is the way of the human mind. Another knock flows through the door. Right, you have someone to greet. With both feet ready to go, you start to make your way to the front of your apartment. A sound comes from the bathroom. A ringtone? You must have forgotten your phone again. It's probably the lack of sleep you've been experiencing. The person at the door could wait. They were probably a jehovah's witness anyhow. Then again, the person calling you could be conducting a survey about the satisfaction level you gain from your vacuum. In any case, it has a higher chance of being someone you care about. You go to the bathroom and open the door. There is a knock on your door. There you stand in a separate doorway clear across the apartment. You were about to go to bed. Who could that be at this hour? This is your bedroom. There is one black lamp that gives off a blue light pretty much all the time. You can only see the blue painted across the walls since the lights are off. That's how you like it. Your bed looks comfortable right now. Your sheets have a large print of daisies sprawled across them and are rather warm. Thank god, since this room is always cold. It is the only cold one too. Well, the ceiling fan is always on, so there you go. You see a yellow glow out of the corner of your eye. It is the display light on the bottom of your computer's monitor, signaling standby mode. It's been that way for the longest time. Regardless, you can't bring yourself to miss the disgusting pictures, the drama, or the stupid stories told around a monitor's eye-raping light. You move over and turn it off. Just as you are about to yawn, you here another knock at your door. Whoever this is, they are persistent. Your stomach growls. Right, you're hungry. Thank god your stomach is persistent. You figure the person must be a dear friend if they've come to bother you this late. Friends always do that. You turn around and move out into the hallway. There is a knock at your door. There you stand, having just turned around in the shower to rinse soap from the front of your body. You had already rinsed off your back. You cannot simply abandon cleanliness now. This is your bathroom. It is about as remarkably white as your living room, save the two gray doors leading to your living room and bedroom. Between you and the rest of the room is an equally bright shower curtain. When you are done being cleansed, you drag it aside and behold a perfectly normal room. Even the mirror is foggy, just like every other time you've taken a shower. You glance at it briefly. Yes, that is you there. Your position correlates with what you see in the mirror, so it's only logical for you to be in the mirror seeing yourself seeing yourself in the mirror despite all the smudges on it. You take a white towel and dry off, then wrap it about your hips. You hear your phone go off in the living room. When you move towards the door, you hear the typical new message alert of the instant messenger that you use come barreling through your computer's speakers. Then there is another knock on the farthest door at the front of the apartment. You look in its general direction, ignoring the fogginess of the mirror and the whiteness of the wall in the way. You continue on to the door to the living room and open it. You come in the front door and see the long stretch of a hallway that leads to your living room and kitchen. The door closes behind you. There is a knock on your door. You feel the faintest feeling that you should not answer it or even turn around. You just got home, dammit. Who was on your heels so hot that they could be bothered to bother you so soon after you arrive in your haven? You turn around. Your previous annoyance turns into anger. The door before you is red and has a black knob. You don't remember it being red. That must've been the lack of sleep. You suddenly feel tired. Just as you are about to yawn, your phone goes off. You take it out of your right pocket and flip it open. When you hold it up to your ear, you hear a faint, concerned voice. "Are you okay? What happened? You seem distracted. You aren't going to do something rash are you?" The knob catches your eye. You reach for it with your free hand. Suddenly, it is yanked off its hinges and flies away from you. Strips of decorated wood that used to make up the doorway fly away with it and crash against the floor, creating an odd, acoustic tune with the timing and harshness of the contact. The rest simply falls to your feet. You look straight into the... Well, you can't call it a room. It is outside and vast in its darkness, though there is one dimly lit area not too far from where the door was. Where the door is right now is right under the lit area. It gives everything there a redish glow, including something that is suspended right above it. You attempt to make out what it is, but to no avail. You move forward cautiously. Slowly, the thing that is suspended in the air steadily becomes clearer. The first thing you notice is that a rope is holding it up. The second thing you notice is that whatever is being suspended is human shaped. You glance back to the doorway you came through. It is still there, its contents still putting off a white glow. You continue moving forward. As you move closer to an ideal position for beholding the sight, despite the foggy red light, you realize that the thing seems familiar. That draws you towards it even more. The moment the red light touches you, you see two blue lights appear where its head presumably is. The arms come to life and quickly extend towards you. You attempt to jump back, but the hands wrap around your head, over your eyes. You hear it whisper, “What do you think you're doing up there?~” You feel your feet leave the ground as you are drawn towards the thing, basking in the red light it apparently wished to share. Your breathing does not quicken, not even when one hand leaves your face, letting you see with one eye both those bright, white eyes. The hand still on you drops down to your neck, holding you up comfortably by itself. You see the other bring up a knife. It lingers between your two sets of eyes as the whisper echoes in your head, making thought inconceivably difficult. Suddenly, you sense that something has been cut. You are falling with the thing that holds you. Both of your bodies collide with and crash through the door below. You find yourself on your bed, sitting upright and gasping for air. Everything is dark save the dim, red light coming through the window. You notice the glass isn't where it is supposed to be. When you try to move across your sheets you cut your foot. The blood matches the light. Numerous glass shards fall from your sheets as you leave them and stand straight up in your room. The air is still, stale, cold, and hard to breathe. There is something else there, sharing the air. You're sure of it. You run towards the window and jump out, roughly landing on the ground. That hardly stops you. You get up and briefly glance back to the apartment, then resume running. You do not once think of stopping. Daylight will come soon.
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