《Solitary》


 Part 1

    I ran from room to room, ducking through doorways and trying to block out that obnoxious noise the lights were making. Who even uses those anymore! I found a closet and concealed myself within.


    Whatever was chasing me looked like it lost my trail, or maybe it just gave up? Either way I was glad. This was too real, but then it couldn''t be. Maybe this was all some frigged up nightmare or something. Perhaps I got knocked out or I fainted or SOMETHING, and this was all in my head. Then again, I''d be up shit''s creek if I were comatose. The two of them combined would properly explain why my head was hurting so much. It was getting unbearable. I needed to rest, maybe understand how in the world I ended up in this mess.


    Although it had been a couple hours already, even with this perpetual banging in my head, I remember most of what happened before I wound up here. I was at work in the office and my boss had sent me to an Archiving room in the basement to get some outdated documents for her. Something about an government inspection that had something to do with tax evasion, I think.


    Didn''t matter to me. I had a feeling that she had this coming to her anyway, the thieving hag that she was. I could always get a new job. I took the elevator down and walked towards the Archives.


    Was a short trip down the narrow, dark hallway. When I got to the Archive''s door, something strange happened. The lights along the entire hallway flickered for a couple seconds. That was when I realized that all the lights in the hallway were fluorescent, indicating just how old this building, or at least the basement, was, and i noticed that they had a faint buzz coming from each of them. Disregarding all of that, I stepped inside.


    Filing cabinets were everywhere, all in neat rows and alphabetically ordered. The lights in there were very dim though, as if they were slowly dying out. I am not too familiar with how fluorescent lights work, but these obviously had to be replaced soon. Maybe then we could get som LEDs down here.


    Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!The Finance files were in a cabinet on the other side of the room. Dust flew into the air when I opened up the drawers. One more thing that had to be fixed. Finding the specific documents took some time because my eyes could barely see in that semi-darkness. And it seemed as though it was getting darker the longer I stayed there. I wanted to leave. At last, I had found the documents that my boss had sent me for. Now I could leave the dark archives and go back to the sweet silence and comfort of LED lightbulbs. When I opened the door, I didn''t see a hallway.


    The doorway itself was a viscous-looking black, as though the entire universe ended right in front of me. I stood there in shock. What was happening? Did the lights go out in the hallway? Just as I was beginning to grasp the severity of the situation that I was in, something else was beginning to grasp me. A slender, dark arm gripped onto me and pulled me into the unknown abyss.


    Somehow I was falling, seemingly into nothingness. My body froze, my limbs went numb, and for a few seconds, I thought I was dead. Suddenly I collided with something hard. I had fallen into an old, smelly room. My ankles were the first thing that I noticed, because it felt like they''d been run over by a 16-wheeler truck after I landed. The buzzing was back, much louder than before. The fluorescent lights themselves were certainly much brighter too. The carpet that I laid on was damp, almost completely wet, and the room itself, was empty.


    Was there a basement beneath the basement? How could I get out? Is anyone else here? My head was whirling with questions, but the pain had the best of me. At some point in all of that, I passed out.

 Part 2

    Nothing in my surroundings had changed when I came to. Miraculously and to my relief, the pain in my ankles had somewhat subsided enough for me to stand. This relief was short-lived however, as I started to recall to myself what was happening. After this, I slumped down into one of the corners of the room.


    Now that my teeth-grinding ankle pain had subsided a bit, I could start finding a way out of this mess. The ceiling was the first place that I checked. I''d expected to see a hole that I could crawl back out of, but there was no hole. That made me panic a little. How in hell did I fall into here then? I couldn''t be bothered with wondering about strange things too much after that. I just wanted to get out of there.


    I left the room and started walking around. There were big rooms, small rooms, a bathroom or two, even a couple elevators, but there were no stairs anywhere. Those elevators didn''t work either. By now I was convinved that I wasn''t underneath my office building anymore, because It only took me a minute or two to walk to the other side of the building. I''d been walking around for about 15 minutes.


    There were power outlets in the walls, but I doubt they all worked, since the elevator buttons didn''t anyway. The fact that the carpet was consistently damp regardless of where I walked was also confusing. Athough the rooms'' layout differed each time I walked into another one, certain characteristics remained absolute. Yellow walpaper, damp carpet, flourescent lightbulbs, and the dammed buzzing sound they made. Besides that, it was very silent. Until it wasn''t.


    Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. I was beginning to wonder if I would go insane in this place before I got out when my phone started ringing. How could I have forgotten about my smartphone? Instantaneously, I pulled it out of my pocket and examined it.


    The alarm that I''d set to 5:30 to feed my dog was going off. I dismissed it, then unlocked my phone. There wasn''t any service availiable, which made sense because of how far underground I was. I was thrilled when I saw that my battery percentage was on 72%. For once I had decided to charge my phone and it actually paid off.


    Yes! Since It was 5:30, that meant that I was out cold for about an hour. This meant that somebody must have realized I was gone and was now looking for me. That meant I would just have to sit tight and wait for someone to come rescue me. Then I heard a giggle. Then footsteps. Apparently. I wasn''t alone.