At exactly nine thirty i was standing in that familiar corridor fumbling with the keys. The corridor was, for a lack of better words, white. The floors were white. The walls were white. The ceilings? You guessed it, white. The only accent to this otherwise bleached tunnel of a landscape was the doors, painted in hues of dark blue. The keys shook with my hands as i attempted to hold the right one steady enough to insert it into the very much not keyhole shaped hole. Come to think of it, the key itself wasn’t really key shaped either. Funny how design changes with tech like that, yet we still keep the iconography of the key and keyhole in mind.
I finally steady my hands enough to be able to insert the key. As i lightly spin my shaking hand, it gives resistance. The key doesn't spin in the hole. I pull it out and insert it again. Still no spin. After a few tries, it finally gives way, unlocking the door. I look at the key briefly after i pull it out. Damn thing’s a hybrid. A small strip of what must work as wire runs across the bottom of the clearly still physically unlocking key. Both electrical and mechanical. Twice the types of mechanisms, twice the safety. I shrug as i put the key back into my pocket. If someone really wanted to get through, no type of lock, hybrid or not, would stop them. Besides bashing the door itself in, blowing straight through the lock would also work, as well as half a dozen other methods that quite frankly aren’t relevant here and now.
As the door opens, i step inside the small studio apartment, barely over 20 years of age. The floor is the same disgusting plastic mat most of these apartments have. “Easier to clean”, is the excuse that’s usually given. Yeah right. The shit is cheap. It smells slightly of rice and unclean apartment. None of this really matters, however, compared to what i see right as i enter (or, quite frankly, before i even truly enter the apartment): my friend, sitting on a very uncomfortable wooden chair at his very uncomfortable wooden table, a vacant stare in his eyes. Damn cheapskate should have gotten better stuff.
I move my right arm to type on the keyboard that is attached to my left arm, sending data up the wire that coils its way up the arm to attach to my glasses. Two simple words is all it takes. “DMN SRCH”. With those magical words, the, well, glasses of my glasses light up, showing me red fog all around the apartment, especially concentrated around my friend. Those motherfuckers got to him. I type another word as i move closer to my seemingly out of it friend. “CLNS”. Most of the fog dissipated. Sadly this was the easy part.
I feel the goosebumps crawling up my arms as i approach my friend. A noise beeps in my ear, warning me of the presence around him. I type a string of words far too long to recount here, with the intention of purging the higher class presence occupying him.
This, however, proved to be far too slow, as i lose control over my body. My arms reach out, opening up the laptop lying on the table as i reach over it at an awkward angle. I type in the password i have never in my life known, and up pops a video feed. My body pushed my friends limp body off of the chair he was sitting at, leaving room for me to sit and watch.
A purple room constantly shrinking. My friend is slowly being crushed by the ever approaching walls. The room expands again, at its center a small cube of meat and other human tissue.
He speaks in my ears. “STN S DD”, he repeats time after time again, his faces slowly moving closer to each of my ears over the course of what feels like an eternity. I’m sweating profusely, trails of liquid running down my entire body. We’re in the purple room. The walls are still moving further and further away, creating an ever expanding space. I never once lose sight of them, yet it quickly feels like i could run for an eternity and never reach a wall. He speaks those accursed words into my ears. “STN S DD”, he says over and over and over and over and over and over and over again as he enters my ears. His voice is now inside. My voice. I say the words. “STN S DD”. Yet i know they are not true. For as i look out the east facing windows, that large accursed star rises all the same. While the depravity of the night is his hunting grounds, the day offers no rest from his influence. That accursed star shines its light down upon us all the same.