Unspeakably Scary Things Issue #10

“What?” I asked the figure, not sure what I was hearing. “What do you mean—?”

There was a rush. The ground met me, and I kept going. I went right through my floor. Then deeper. Through so much dirt and even lava. The speed of it was so much, I couldn’t think.

I couldn’t understand.

But I arrived quickly enough.

I was back in open space; the top of a cavern so large that my mind couldn’t quite parse it. You could fit skyscrapers in here. You could fit oceans in this place.

And I was still falling.

Until I wasn’t. I’ve never been bungee jumping, but I had to imagine it was something like this. A sudden pull on the middle of my back stopped my momentum. But I didn’t bounce back up or anything. I just hung there.

I screamed for a long time then. Just kept screaming into that massive space. It took so long for me to calm down—but I did eventually start to notice what this new place was like.

The walls appeared—at least at a distance—to be smooth stone. It would be impossible to climb them. And the ground below was glass. I could see myself as a little speck.

After a few more moments, the glass rippled. And a massive reflection of the figure appeared.

“Pointless, pointless, pointless,” the person intoned. “A life that would never have mattered.”

“What is all this!?” I screamed out at him.

The person sounded calm. “This is an afterlife. Isn’t that obvious? You died up there—and you’ve been pulled down here. This is where you’ll spend the rest of eternity.”

“No…” My voice nearly failed me then. “But I’m still playing the game! I haven’t finished The Phobia Box!”

“Some people lose,” the person replied. “And when they lose, they die. And when they die, I take them here.”

“But…that doesn’t make sense…the bugs—”

I dropped again.

Wind rushed around me, filling my ears. I flailed about but couldn’t even right myself. Each time I tried to turn; the wind spun me back. I was going to hit the glass face-first. My screaming face reflected back at me right before—

The impact hurt. But the time after hurt even more. My bones were shattered, my skin ripped. I couldn’t breathe more than ragged gasps. But I was already dead. So, I couldn’t die.

I had no way of knowing how long it took, the agony seemingly endless, but my “body” repaired enough for me to breathe. I groaned as I sat up. My own reflection showed fading cuts across my face.

I looked around. The walls were so far away and there appeared to be nothing between me and them.

Nothing anywhere.   

I started thinking about how this had all happened. The magazine. The box. But I had no conclusion, and the silence was getting to me. My voice didn’t even echo when I yelled out.

So, I got up, picked a direction, and walked.  

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