Dial Tone (Backrooms Fanfic)

Part 2

My vision is dark and spinning but I can tell I'm somewhere, somewhere familiar, filled with pale light and muted yellows. No- No, that's wrong. My eyes are starting to adjust, struggling to take in the colours, registering nothing except that the yellows are more garish than anything; dingy and straining to resemble the crisp, clean yellow of the sunrise.

I close my eyes. Give my body a moment to recalibrate. Then open them again.

For a moment, I'm tempted to close them one more time because my surroundings feel like a hallucination. It would make sense that a place like this could end up in my dreams; the police station has rooms just like it - plain and empty and stiffly lit by ugly fluorescents in dire need of replacement. They interrogate people there. Put them to the test. Make them run through their minds like a maze, spending hours tracing it back to the beginning, to their motives.

But this- this is just a room. From what I can see anyway. Rooms have an end. They have a door. An exit. And if this is a dream, then I can just wake up. I can handle this. I can do this.

I stand up and give the place a second, more critical look. I note the carpet beneath my shoes. I see the end of the wall maybe ten feet away on my left. The one on my right goes on a bit longer until it reaches a doorway. Beyond it is a room just like it. Through there, I see another wall, another turn, and another identical room just a little farther on-

"Strange." I say it out loud, to reassure myself, I think. Because strange is not alien. It's not incalculable. Strange is something I can work with.

The prickles of unease in my stomach and along my neck are not.

I shake myself out a bit but don't notice any sharp pains or aches that are out of the ordinary. However I've fallen here - if I'm really here at all - I didn't fall too far or too badly. The air here is tepid and tainted with the smell of mildew but it's breathable and I take a moment to appreciate the feeling of it filling my lungs.

The worst thing right now is the silence. Well, half-silence, if you count the distant buzzing of the lights. The lack of sound other than that is suffocating. The lights are all on, the electric bill has obviously been paid; Someone's here, somewhere. Hopefully many someone's. It'll take a lot of people to explain to me what exactly is going on here.

I begin to wonder if I should have been going to my shrink these last couple of weeks.

It's no use though. No exploration into my childhood is going to make this yellow wallpaper disappear. So I take the first step - the only step really, the step I can't possibly regret - and move toward the wall. Reach out a hand. Run my fingers over the surface.

They feel... normal. Solid. A little textured, grainy almost, but pretty much like I expected. I hesitate, then knock. Then again, a little harder.

Interesting.

I follow the wall up to where it connects to the ceiling, about eight feet from the floor if I had to guess. All I see, stretching out in every direction, are ceiling tiles, row upon grimy row of them. Alternating throughout are the lights, the ones whose buzzing is becoming a permanent part of my internal ambience.

I keep my hand on the wall, letting the feel of it ground me. The silence here is claustrophobic but it doesn't feel right to break it quite yet. So instead, I take a look at my phone, still clutched in my left hand. My call to Jeremy is still trying to go through.

I shake my head. That doesn't make sense. It should have either reached him or dropped by now. I hold it to my ear. It's still ringing. Trying to break through.

I shiver a little. It's not cold here; the temperature is neutral enough that I hadn't noticed it either way. But the shivering continues nonetheless. I tell myself it's just adrenaline withdrawal when, honestly, I'm pretty adrenaline is what's keeping this fever dream going.