The menacing red flames grew greater and greater with each second. I stood there helpless as the lethal fire engulfed my house before my very own eyes and destroyed everything I’d ever known. The bright sparks twirled and the air around me suffocated me as if to boast that it had won and I had lost. The last month had been grueling. During the mornings, I would hopelessly roam around town contacting real estate agents in search of a new house to live in. At nights, I would go back to my $20-per-night hotel room to fall dead asleep on an empty stomach.
However, now my endless struggle had come to an end. Although the house wasn’t much, it was just enough for me to make due. It was located at the end of an eerie cul de sac in a completely different province than my previous house. Here, strong chilly winds pushed the dead but still standing trees from side to side and the sky was constantly filled with grey clouds. The feeling of standing alone on the street was harrowing, but the house looked just fine. The foremost thing I looked forward to arranging was my closet. Upon entering the house and stumbling on my own two feet, I ran toward my room to explore the empty closet that awaited me.
I pulled open the wooden white doors of my new closet and the next thing I saw was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Before me, on the carpeted floor of my closet was a two feet long handprint made of blood. The tips of the fingers weren’t anything similar to human hands either. They were knife-like and acute. A high-pitched scream escaped my mouth without me being able to control it. Before I could properly collect my thoughts, I spotted something glowing through the corner of my eye. I approached it while it glowed and spun in a 360 degree as the reds, blacks, oranges, and yellows combined to form an unappealing brown. Without thinking I went closer and I was pulled into the mystic portal unaware of what lay ahead for me. What happened next cannot be described fully through my limited vocabulary. The
portal as unappealing as it looked, led me to a stygian void. I felt as though I was falling. I tried to scream but my lungs had run out of air and no sound came out of my vocal cords. I can’t recollect for how long I was there in that empty space, but it felt like it had been hours but at the same time, it also felt as if it were only a few seconds. I don’t quite know what eventuated after that, but I plummeted onto an arid ground surrounded by massive solid black and dark grey rocks. The abrupt fall triggered my jeans to rip and a wound formed on my knee through which wine-red blood oozed out and slowly trickled down my leg. My hair which was originally a light shade of brown was now darker, filthy, and tangled. I tore a part of the sleeve of my olive green H&M shirt and cautiously wrapped it around my wound in order to stop it from getting infected.
The atmosphere in this place was absurd. Somewhat similar to the cul de sac that I now lived in, dry winds blew and dust filled the air. The dust was so much so that it burned my nose and made me regret ever wishing to leave my house without a mask on. The sky was neither clear nor cloudy, but a tanned beige. Shrilling shrieks penetrated the air, although I couldn’t quite interpret where or what they were coming from. It was a matter of a brief moment before I found out.
I hopped onto my feet which I instantly regretted considering the wound on my knee. The realization hit me that I was barefoot. After taking a few steps to get to the side of the rock that was blocking my view, what I saw detached the force of gravity from under my feet and I once again stumbled onto the ground. I immediately crawled in reverse not registering that it’d be ruining the condition of my wound and hid behind the rock once again before the mysterious creature could work out my presence. Frightened and shaking I tried to grasp what the creature was but failed to do so. It wore a mournful, inky black cloak that covered its head. The hands and feet were similar to the prints that I recalled in my bedroom and assumed that this creature was possibly the same creature that had been in my room. I peeked from the corner of the rock I was taking refuge behind and found the beast to be out of sight. Hence, I carefully stepped out of my hiding spot. I was standing there hoping to assess where I was and what this place could be when a drop of velvet red blood dropped onto my forehead and rolled down my dusky skin. Before I could realize it, the same beast that I had sighted before looked down on me as blood dripped down his razor-sharp, elephant-sized teeth and I finally took a look at its face for the first time. The beast was a morph of a banshee and a grim reaper. It was skeletal but had a long, frightening face that stared at me with a tremendous smile plastered over its face as it planned to make me its next meal. Unable to do anything, the ghoul instantly swallowed me whole. I was certain I was going to die but instead found myself in the hollow see-through belly of the ghoul, completely scratchless. Its belly dripped with black gooey matter and through it were bones which gave me the clue as though I wasn’t the first victim of the ghoul. I attempted to stand up on my already bruised blue feet however; I ended up slamming my head onto one of the walls of the ghoul’s belly.
The ghoul let out an ear-splitting shriek and its belly glowed a blinding bright white. I squeezed my eyelids closed to protect them from the light and the next thing I knew, there was a deafening silence. I felt wind sweep across my skin from where I tore my sleeve and opened my eyes to find myself on the bare sidewalk of my house. However, to my utter shock, my house wasn’t there. In fact, the land was perfectly cropped and weed-less as though someone was tending to it; as though there never had been a house there, to begin with…