He turned for the door when the room darkened, and another chasm opened its maw.

One step forward, and he felt his body lighten.

Something was wrong, one moment, then the next he was falling. No, he wasn't... he wasn't falling... the world was! 

Dáinn let out a cry as the ground rose from underneath him, slamming into his body, silencing him. His eyes closed tightly, groaning in pain, Dainn tried to gasp for air. Only to breathe in a heavy burden of hot pain, knives drilling into his body. He had no clue what happened; his only thought was that the ground collapsed underneath him. Considering he was still alive and not dead, it must mean he had only fallen down a floor. But upon opening his eyes, expecting to see crumbling walls and overturned furniture, instead he saw something so much more. What he saw sent a chill rattling down his spine, molding the muscles perfectly to the bone. The tension in his body stiffened. 

Trembling, he slowly pushed himself up. Nothing was there but everything at once. Separating walls, halls stretching into infinity. Something so bizarre and abstract it could hardly be explained by the tiniest speck of rationality. What was laid out in front of him looked like an optical illusion, one of those illusions that the longer you look, the stranger it gets. At first glance, it seemed like some abstract painting, black and white checkered floors twisting up into a spiral, creating a ceiling above him, and that was all. Nothing blocking the ever-stretching darkness out infinitely. A never-ending labyrinth, spinning into a tornado of blacks and whites, an illusion made just for him. He knew nothing more. But a creeping fate, watching his movement from the very beginning. From beyond the walls, hidden by the obscurity. Cracking open his mind, smearing the jagged edges with wanderlust.

A blink and it tripped over itself, changing in a tidal wave of revolting mess dyed in fleshy pulsing beauty. A heart thumping against his chest, the thunder in his life dragging him forward. To fast for a human, skipping over every other beat. Human or not, he didn't know. Words were barely forming sentences in his brain. Nerve firings working on electricity far stronger than needed. Nothing made sense in the passing thoughts that lingered no longer than a few seconds. 

Buildings appeared, growing from the ground and the ceiling. Some even grew from the sides of others. Weird cylinders appeared near Dáinn, coming in bleeding colors of reds, blacks, and whites, sometimes even striped. Stairs and doors lead to parts of buildings, ebony doors, and some lead nowhere. A putrid, fearing fluid flowed further down the walls of the nonexistent homes. Claws of sweating purity. Crystals exploded into mountains of ethereal piles of death. Glimmering in the light of shadows under watchful glassy eyes, crashing into the ceiling. He was afraid that the next time he blinked, it would change again. The space around him was dead silent, stretching on, grasping hold of this realm. Dragging it into a prison of mutism. In that dead prison, his heart was the only thing moving. Bagging hard against the bars that imprisoned them within the palms of terror. A thumping horror only human-made, challenged by its falsity. The numbness in his skin tore at his flesh just as knives in a living being. It was killing him, but what was it?

A desolate plain for his ever-living pain? Barren lands so deep and vast that creatures die just after one look. But oh, his being couldn't be killed. It wouldn’t allow that. No, the lifeless eyes, the ever-changing land, the oozing madness wished for his stay. To protect, to grip, to hold, forever in infinity. Nothing more, nothing less. Here he would stay, so nothing could leave, nothing of him. But what was it? Velvet wounds etched into reality? Pulsing and rancid with want. Homes built into the fiction, kissing every step, drenched in ever knowing touch, tongues curling in the cracks of one’s mind. Forever licking the walls of the unseen. The fevered moan of space itself, slick and heaving, drunk on the bodies it consumes. Echoes festering in the deep pits of a honeyed maw.

Dainn gaped for air, but his lungs never seemed to inhale any air. Burning down his esophagus, making him violently cough. He doubled over, his vision twirling, his thoughts barely making sense of his surroundings. His fingers curled, digging into his palms. Willing himself to slow down, to stop the spiral. However, it was no use; things kept changing. The biggest change already happened, the change in appearance, colors, shapes…but this time it was different. Something about the way a soft breeze drifted along his skin. Gentlely brushing through his brunette hair. Curling gingerly around the building, hugging them closely in its presence. To the tender haunted hums wandering aimlessly through the darkened windows. Loving and sickening, they faded upon unsaid words. A hum singing through the marrow, not quite sound, not quite thought. Changes so deeply profound he could only explain it as being there. The change was a presence that wasn't quite alive nor dead, but undeniably aware. Not a ghost, not a god, just…something.    

Dáinn gagged on nothing and stumbled backwards. Was there anything more he could do but move forward? There was no sign of the hole he had fallen through. All that was left was to hope deeply that this palace was nothing more than a dream. A very vivid one. He looked above him in a desperate hope to see a way home, only to be met with a churning spiral of reds, blues, and yellows that bled into one another like oil in water. The colors twisted unnaturally, pulsing like exposed veins, forming tunnels that gaped like open wounds, each one convulsing slightly as if breathing. The air warped around them, making the walls ripple and bend, as though reality itself was rotting from the inside out. The danger he felt almost wholly disappeared, a sense of unease replacing the danger. A sticky grip upon his body, crawling beneath his skin. Foreboding drilling into his skull, welcoming him. He had been entirely aware that there was a second, more profound feeling for a while now. He noticed it way before he opened his eyes. Looking up gave him the answer he was looking for. A watchful, teary glare gazed back at him. Surrounding the spiral were thousands of glassy eyes. They didn’t move. They looked like the eyes of a long-forgotten porcelain doll. Glossy and lifeless. Although they didn’t move like they were alive, they still watched him. They followed him wherever he went. 

‘Another optical illusion.’ He thought.

He blinked.

His head throbbed with a piercing needle of shattering cruelty. He was falling out of a darkened hallway, out behind a decayed door. Ebony door splitting from the seams. Pulsing of a ray of freedom that never comes. Til madness do us part. An inky tear dripping from the ceiling. Sticking his feet to the concrete slab his feet landed upon, cracking, cracking, cracking! Here he stood, the world spinning on its heels. Sickening thing, a sprawling storm of chaos. Peering colors in the eye. Behind the doo,r nothing more.

Dáinn cursed in fear, his feet barely staying on the platform. Cracking the world quieted. Quickly, he backed away, only leaning forward a little to look over the edge of the stone slab. The platform he stood on hung high above a boundless gray fog, a chaos shifting with pleasure at the sight of its welcomed guest. Lights glittered, contorting its tentacles throughout the fog like he was witnessing a hurricane from above. He gazed down at the eye of the storm that appeared only seven feet below him. In the eye, another concrete slab appeared as the fog rolled over the top of the slab, petting it like it was beckoning him closer. 

Dainn turned back toward the door and twisted its handle…click… it stopped midway. Kicking did nothing, as its grip to its frame had grown solid, refusing his entry. Dáinn shook his head; there was no other choice now. Heaving a heavy sigh, he walked towards the end of the platform. He braced himself for the fall and jumped. When he landed, the second platform wobbled underneath his weight, fog curling over his feet. Trembling, he did his best to stabilize himself. When the concrete slab quit moving, he peered over the edge. Another platform appeared just underneath him, but this time it was closer.  

He readied himself and jumped again. This time, the platform cracked. The mist seized, mockingly spinning around him. But as the colors spun and twirled, he didn’t stop. He couldn’t count how many times he had jumped, his mind stuck only on making it to the next. The concrete slabs he landed on either wobbled, cracked, or simply tilted. He came close to falling once when the platform wobbled, and he lost his footing. Barely able to grab on as he slipped over the edge. His fingertips were bleeding from digging them into the rough stone. The soft, gentle fog glided through his fingers, tenderly kissing the trickling blood. Dainn dug his fingertips into his palms, trying to brush away the lingering fog. He rested for a few minutes before continuing again.

His feet landed on another slab; he waited a few minutes for it to stabilize. The gray fog stopped suddenly, its loving embrace shifted away from his body. Dainn ignored the fog and looked for the next one, but with a sudden shift in gravity, the world tilted. He had slipped backward. This time, there was no grabbing the slab, as it had disappeared into the shifting colors. Wind brushed past as he fell, the fog parting ways for him to glimpse a light below. For what seemed like forever, his body finally crashed into the ground. Neon purple water droplets shot up when his body collided with the stone ground. It wasn’t bone-cracking. There was no sharp snap, no blinding pain that screamed something's broken. Just a deep, echoing jolt. The kind that hums in the muscles and lingers in the bones. At first, it felt like nothing, but then the adrenaline started to fade, like the tide pulling back to reveal the damage underneath. The ache settled in slowly, dull and heavy in his shoulder that had hit first, a burning throb in his wrist that tried to break the fall. A bruise was already beginning to bloom on his hip, dark and tender, the skin tender to even the softest touch. 

The glowing water rippled beneath him. Dainn gasped hard, trying to bring back the air that had been lost upon impact. When he had gained back some control over his aching body, he pushed himself up off the ground. When he did so, more pain flared in his back with the straightening of his spine. 

“Damn it!” He barely croaked out through his windpipes.

 Dáinn’s voice cracked with discomfort as he spoke. The glowing droplets hung from the tips of his hair, dripping into his lap. He pushed himself up, ignoring the pain in his shoulder and body. He observed his surroundings; his brown eyes landed on another ebony door. The door had a slight glitch, changing between colors. Flickering, the image of the door disappeared only to reappear a few seconds later. Dáinn moved towards the door, hesitating for a few minutes. He grabbed the handle just as the door reappeared. Before it could disappear again, he pulled open the ebony door. As the door swung open, it revealed the world it concealed. 

“This… This isn't Earth.” Dáinn barely made his voice croak out words.

Lights filled his vision, blinding him. When his vision recovered, he observed his surroundings. He stepped through the door, and as he did so, the glitch on his hand disappeared along with the numbing sensation. The ebony door that had turned pure white slammed behind him. He sighed heavily; there was no way he was getting back to that place anytime soon, if at all. He had to make the best of the situation he was in right now. He watched the purple grass shift at his feet. He looked toward the trees that towered above his head.

Lamps hung from large trees; their yellow leaves swayed in a soft breeze. Stripes of color adorned their bark, twisting and turning, and the stripes branched outward. Creating large arms from which thousands of lamps hung. The lamps appeared in all shapes and sizes, varying from colors he’d seen before to unknown colors. Each lamp donned its own ethereal glow. Waves of peace flowed from dark red lamps like waves on an ocean. Explosions of sorrow popped around soft lavender lamps like bubbles popping in the air. One that struck him the most was the pure white lamps; an emotion he didn’t recognize flickered with the flame that resided within. An emotion so long distant, there was no hope of ever knowing it again.   

If it weren’t for the fact that he wasn’t on earth, he would’ve stayed and admired the sight. But Dáinn had no way of knowing how dangerous this place was. So he continued, taking out the only gun he kept on him. When he emerged from the forest, sunlight peeked over distant mountains like an explosion of orange light.