You're talking on the phone with your friend, arguing nonsensically, when it happens. You were coming back from school, it's hot outside, and you're irritated, so you want to get home as soon as possible, so it only makes sense for you to make a turn down an alley you were sure was a shortcut right across an aggravatingly long line of stores, but you end up on some gross, dark, unending trail to fucking nowhere. Karkat is being fucking annoying as usual, and you feel fed up in general, so you hang up, pressing your thumb to the button angrily, cutting his piercing voice off. Who cares about his problems? You've got your own.
Speaking of, this alley is going way longer back that it rationally should have. Nevertheless, you keep walking, but when a subtle shuffling noise scuffles directly behind you, your heart rate soars, and you turn around frantically. Nothing visible to be seen, but then again, that wasn't nothing. You're definitely spooked now, but panicking would do nothing. You try to calm yourself, however with no avail upon noticing the rancor of the city has disappeared completely. You look ahead to the black alley, disgusting and filled with trash. There's a smell lingering on the back of your mind; it's cloying and foul, almost stinging. You rub at your nose momentarily, then decide, fuck it, you're leaving this creepy-ass scene. For some reason, it's a relief that you can see the way you came. You begin heading back, flicking your bangs out of your eyes, feeling the sick in your stomach start to clear a bit. And that's when you realize something is wrong. You grip the straps of your backpack tight, your chipped, chewed nails digging roughly into your palms, and kick at the empty air, hoping to whatever religious entity you were just having some sort of a mind trip. Your foot connects with something, sadly, though it's strange. Your foot falls back down to the muck of the ground, but there was definitely something there. Not solid, exactly, but existent, and a few more stupid looking jabs, and you've caught your leg on it.
"What the hell...?" you mumble, and then try to swipe at it with your hands, not really thinking about what in the world you're doing. Your leg winds inwards, your heel caught in a gelatinous mass of... the alley around you(?) stretching around your shoe and bringing your body plummeting forwards to trip, and you grasp at the air desperately. You don't even register at first that you literally, not figuratively, actually tangibly rip away the alleyway scene in front of you. No, you realize right away something is wrong, and your guts can tell the second you trip. Something is very, very wrong and you've just triggered a terrible something. You land on empty blackness, the silence not noticeable to you, as your heartbeat pounds terribly in your ear.