It hurts. Everything hurts. I can't open my eyes. I can't feel my fingers. I can't hear myself breathing.
It hurts. My head, my chest, the monster. They all hurt.
Please, make it stop.
Please, don't make me look at you.
I woke up. Everything was dark, dark, dark. I didn't like it in there. So I moved. But the doors didn't look like doors, and the walls never stayed walls. At least, not when I was looking at them.
Everything was dark, dark, dark. I heard the sound of breathing, and the echo of dripping water, and my heart beating in my chest. I didn't like it here. This place was bad.
I saw a light. Faint, yellow light, coming through the windows. It lit up the walls. It lit up the doors. Everything was what it was supposed to be.
I still didn't like it there.
I walked down the stairs. Down and down and down. Each step brought me closer to the light, to the pretty, yellow light.
The steps brought me to a tunnel. It was big, bigger than my entire body. And dark. No more darkness. I didn't want to go through there. When I looked back, I was already inside.
I crawled through the tunnel. Someone was crawling towards me from the other side. I could hear their hand slapping against the metal, coming closer and closer to me. When the sound reached its climax, I heard breathing above me.
Then it went away.
I got out of the tunnel and into a smelly room. I didn't like this room. I wanted to go back to the tunnel. But when I looked back, nothing was there.
I walked past the stained walls and kept my head down. I ignored the cribs and the scary children.
The ugly children.
Twisty turny, twisty turny; all the doors led to the same room. Again and again and again.
It became monotonous. Pit-pat, pit-pat. I got used to the sound. Salty, bitter, metallic. I got used to the smell. Brown, disfigured, smelly. I got used to the children.
It was getting brighter. But that didn't matter. The rooms were getting darker, darker and darker. It didn't matter that there was light. In the end, I could only see a door.
A nice door. A pretty door. One that seemed as familiar to me as my mother's smile. I walked to the door and opened it.
It was the same room I was in at the beginning. The same room. But there was a chair in it.
Not the same room, then.
I went over to the chair and sat on it. I was tired. Tired, tired, tired.
Something was in the room with me. Something scary. Something that smelled like blood and felt like a monster. I heard it creep closer and closer to me, felt its breath against my ear, saw its black, three-fingered hand rest on my shoulder.
"Look behind you."