Sorry I'm a bit late! ...Though I guess I'm not really that late, I just had a busy day and didn't get around to this sooner.
I'm sure you've been excited for this one, so I'll let you get right to it. See you at the bottom of the page!
Backrooms (noun) (plural): places where secret, administrative, or supporting work is done; usually not intended to be viewed by the public or the otherwise unauthorized
Gadget Gabe scurried about the lab, checking over the dials and switches on the control panel repeatedly. Occasionally, he'd scurry over to make adjustments on Rupert's "experiment suit", which was just his other set of clothes with various devices clipped on to check his vitals- a heart monitor, a blood pressure reader, a step counter, and other little things he didn't know the purpose of. Rupert kept his eyes locked on the gross little man as he ran back and forth, refusing to take his eyes off him for even a second, but the movement was giving him a migraine.
Needless to say, he was nearing the end of his rope; had been for hours. Gadget Gabe's "examinations" had lasted well into the night, and there were points when Rupert had to fight tooth and nail against the "extra thorough" ones. It finally came to a head when Gadget Gabe decided he had enough to work with (or when he got tired of dodging punches, Rupert didn't know or care), and they could call it a night. Even then, Rupert had slept with one eye open, just in case the little creep decided to poke and prod something that he didn't want poked and prodded.
And now here they both were, in Gadget Gabe's lab, waiting for the final pieces to fall into place so that the way into the Backrooms could get opened already. It was miraculous, really, that the end of Rupert's rope seemed to be getting stretched further and further without snapping.
"At last," Gadget Gabe breathed after way too long, "everything is in place!"
"About bloody time," Rupert grumbled, crossing his arms. "This took forever!"
"Patience, patience," Gadget Gabe chastised, "this is all to ensure the best results."
"And to save Dave, yeah?"
Gadget Gabe waved him off, plopping into his chair and wrapping a greasy hand around one of the bigger switches. "Brace yourself, Rupert Price," he said, "Gadget Gabe is going to show you something incredible-"
"Hurry up!"
"HuRrY uP!" He mimicked, then threw the switch.
Rupert was about to roll his eyes- as if this wanker had any right to put up a fuss!- but before he could, there was a resounding, thunderous ga-dunk that seemed to shake the whole room, possibly even the whole lighthouse. Fans whirred in high hums inside the control panel, working overtime to keep the delicate electronics cool, and through the window, Rupert could see the strange machines shifting, slowly aiming at a single spot in the middle of the room, above the rounded dias.
Everything stilled, just for a second, before there was a blinding flash of light that Rupert could see even with his eyes shut tightly.
Ears ringing, he slowly peered through the window, and saw…
"It worked!" Gadget Gabe shrieked, "it worked! It worked! Gadget Gabe is a genius! The doorway is open once more!"
…Well, Rupert thought, the name's appropriate, I suppose, though rather uncreative. For all the hype Gadget Gabe had tried to instill in him, the doorway to the Backrooms seemed… surprisingly ordinary.
It looked like a rectangular hole, about the size of a typical household doorway, minus the door and the frame. Nothing seemed to be holding it upright, and beyond that was a very different looking room.
Before he could lean forward for a closer look, Gadget Gabe shoved something into his arms. It was his backpack, though when he opened it, he found things that hadn't been in there before: namely duct tape, a permanent marker, plastic sandwich bags, tiny vials with cork stoppers, and a weird contraption with four green buttons and one big red button in the center. "What's this, then?" He asked, pulling the device out.
Gadget Gabe slapped his hand like a teacher scolding a student. Rupert dropped it, gritting his teeth at the grease stain the little freak left on his skin. "It is Gadget Gabe's latest edition of the Teleporter!" He raved. "It is very delicate, but very powerful! The correct button presses will let you go anywhere in our world you wish, and even beyond!"
Rupert hummed curiously, appraising the device again with a little more respect. It made sense; if the doorway closed behind him, then a teleporter would be useful for getting out of the Backrooms quickly, preferably with Dave. But…
"How does it work?"
"Follow your heart," Gadget Gabe said with a shrug. "It usually works out. Usually. Just remember to press the red button last."
"...Ah."
Rupert squinted at the device again. He'd never heard a worse piece of advice when it came to technology; even his mum had had a better answer for getting machines to work: smacking it until it did something. "Follow his heart". Yeah, right. Rupert zipped his bag back up, and with a shooing motion from Gadget Gabe, entered the other side of the lab and approached the doorway.
It turned out that the pictures on the internet weren't that far off. The Backrooms reminded Rupert of a motel he stayed at once when he was a kid, old and worn and yellow. Through this side of the doorway, every room he could see was completely bare, and if he angled his head this way or that, he could see that some rooms and hallways were shrouded in shadow. Without taking his eyes off the doorway, Rupert clicked on the walkie talkie that Gadget Gabe had given him. "Price to GG, do you copy? Over."
The walkie talkie crackled to life almost as soon as he released the button. "Gadget Gabe hears you, yes he does."
"Roger that, GG," Rupert said, steeling himself internally. "I'm going in-"
"Wait, wait!"
He sighed tiredly. "What? Over."
"The baseline, the baseline!" Gadget Gabe fretted. "The baseline must be established!"
Rupert squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. "And how do we do that? Over."
He could practically hear the little man scrabbling through different notebooks and papers over the walkie talkie. "Follow Gadget Gabe's instructions: enter the doorway for thirty seconds, then step back out. This will help indicate immediate effects."
"Fine. Over," Rupert replied, and after the briefest pause, stepped past the threshold.
Instantly, he was hit with a wave of mildew and stale air, the scent making him wrinkle his nose and grimace. Overhead, dull yellow lights flickered and buzzed rhythmically. It was hard to tell from this one spot, but Rupert got a sense that each light flickered and buzzed in the exact same pattern. After about thirty seconds, Rupert stepped backwards into the lab. He took a sharp breath; while the lab smelled unpleasantly of metal and dirty laundry, he felt strangely relieved to be back, as if he'd been trapped in a tiny box in those same thirty seconds, despite the complete emptiness of the Backrooms.
Rupert glanced behind him through the wide window that led to Gadget Gabe's side of the lab. He was smiling and muttering inaudibly to himself as his hands flew across his notebooks and the control panel; jotting down whatever Rupert's vital monitors had recorded. "Gadget Gabe now instructs you to enter again, but this time, observe the doorway from all sides."
Rupert frowned. "You want me to walk around it? Over."
"Yes, yes," Gadget Gabe said impatiently. "Quickly now!"
He rolled his eyes and entered again, coughing once or twice in an attempt to clear the gross scent from the back of his throat. He turned around and looked back at the doorway, which still looked like a big rectangle standing by itself in thin air. As he began to walk to the right, the doorway narrowed, matching his perspective, but then he walked a little further.
"W-what the hell?" The door had disappeared completely, with nowhere near the pomp and circumstance it had appeared in. Rupert found himself staring down a long, long hallway, with rooms and corners and shadows as far as the eye could see. Alone. Trapped.
He scrambled back the few steps he'd taken and heaved a sigh of relief; the door reappeared as silently as it had disappeared. He swallowed heavily and turned the walkie talkie back on. "Oi, you didn't say anything about the door disappearing," he growled.
"It disappeared?" Gadget Gabe sounded genuinely surprised. "How so? Describe it!"
"Um," Rupert's brain felt slow and thick. "I was walking around it, like you said, but when I saw it from the side, I couldn't see it anymore."
There was a pause before Gadget Gabe spoke again, "it does this from all sides?"
"I guess? It's perfectly visible now."
"Check from all sides," the man insisted, "check them now!"
"Don't get your knackers in a twist," Rupert grumbled before eyeing the doorway uneasily. Just a quick runaround. Nothing to be afraid of. Not that he was afraid. He wasn't afraid.
Rupert circled the doorway as quickly as he could without running, feeling an aching relief when the door was visible again. He nearly forgot to check in before Gadget Gabe could barrage him for details. "Yeah. Yeah, it… it disappears from every angle except when I look at it head on."
Gadget Gabe cackled over the walkie talkie. "Something visible from only one angle; a physical representation of the first dimension! Such a thing must have terrified your inexperienced mind."
"I wasn't terrified," Rupert snapped sharply.
Another cackle. "Your vitals say otherwise, Rupert Price."
Rupert felt his face heat up. "Are we done? I want to look for Dave now."
Gadget Gabe sighed, though it sounded more like a whine. "Fine, the search may begin. However, you must be able to find your way back. Use the gadgets Gadget Gabe has provided."
Rupert reached into his backpack and pulled out the duct tape and the permanent marker. He was pretty damn sure Gadget Gabe had not invented either of these "gadgets", but now wasn't the time for that. Dave was here, somewhere; he had to focus on looking for him. He ripped off a hunk of tape and slapped it onto the ground in front of the doorway, then drew an arrow pointing towards it on the shiny gray surface. When he came to a branching hallway, he set down another piece of tape before continuing straight on.
It became a rhythm; pausing every so often to set down some tape and mark it with a little arrow. Everything felt like a rhythm in here. Just as he'd suspected, the lights overhead flickered and buzzed in the exact same pattern for each light. The barely muffled sounds of his boots on the carpet seemed to sync with his heartbeat, steady and dull. The carpet was mostly flat, hardly even a carpet, though the edges near the walls seemed to have just a touch more cushiness to them. How many people had walked on this carpet? How many times had someone ended up in this place, surrounded by nothing but bad lighting and moldy air and yellow, yellow, yellow?
Rupert set down another piece of tape and rose to his feet, only to stop short. He clicked on the walkie-talkie. "GG, this is Price, do you copy? Over."
"What is it?"
"I found something," he said, leaning onto his toes to squint at it from afar. "I think it's a… kitten? Or some kind of animal? Anyway, I'm approaching for a closer look."
Without waiting for a response, Rupert took carefully placed steps towards the fuzzy black creature in front of him. It really did look like a kitten, at least from a few feet away, but when he knelt to get a closer look, he realized it was just a very large patch of mold. He grimaced again; it smelled tangy, bitter, and metallic all at once, and it looked like a few bits of mold were growing in short streaks on the carpet nearby.
He shook his head and got back to his feet. "False alarm," he announced into the walkie talkie. "It's just some mold that looks like a kitten."
Gadget Gabe didn't respond for a moment, though Rupert could hear him muttering distantly through the static. The tone of his voice was different from before; surprised, but almost knowing.
Rupert tapped the button again. "GG, do you copy? Over."
"Yes, yes, Gadget Gabe heard you!" he snapped, much more quickly this time. "Take a sample, immediately!"
"Okay, okay; cripes." Rupert reached back into his backpack to pull out a plastic bag and a pair of tweezers, then knelt back down. Unsure of where to start, he jabbed the tweezers directly into the center of the thing and pulled away. He gagged as the mold stretched away from the source, multiplying the awful stench by a hundred fold before it slid apart like stiff gelatin. He shoved the sample into the bag and stood, backing away quickly. "Sample collected, over. God, that rubbish smells right horrid!"
"Excellent," Gadget Gabe crooned, either unaware of or ignoring Rupert's displeasure. "Continue further into the Backrooms, and collect any more samples of this mold you come across-"
"Wait a tick," Rupert interrupted. "I think I hear something."
"What do you hear-"
"Shut up, I'm listening!"
It was hard to hear over the sound of Gadget Gabe grumbling: a strange, quiet sound that he couldn't quite recognize until he felt a warm, humid brush of air along the back of his neck. He marked the ground once more before rounding a corner. "GG, this is Price. I found a different room; there's water here, and tiles."
The new room wasn't very big, but it was clean and muggy with humidity. Tiny white tiles lined every available surface, and a small set of stairs led into a shallow passage of water. The rippling water caused sparkling reflections to dance on the walls, and under the fluorescent lights, Rupert could see some small puddles of water nearby.
"Take a sample!" Gadget Gabe demanded. "Take a sample right now!"
Rupert did so with a small glass vial, nearly slipping with how wet the floor was. The little waves formed in this pool must have been stronger earlier to have reached so far. Wait a minute…
"GG, this is Price. Waves are caused by gravity, right? From the Earth and moon?"
"Yes, and?" Gadget Gabe grunted.
"If this is a pocket dimension, separate from our world, then why are there waves?"
"Gadget Gabe doesn't know," the man snapped over the line. "Something must have moved through the water recently to cause the waves."
Rupert's eyes widened. "Dave," he whispered. There was no way of telling, but that had to be it. Dave had been through here, recently. "GG, this is Price; I'm going in, over." He lifted his foot to take the first step.
"Wait, wait, WAIT!" Gadget Gabe screeched on the walkie talkie.
Rupert growled and pressed the button again. "What?! What is it this time?!"
"You can't just go in the water! You'll ruin Gadget Gabe's gadgets!"
Rupert glanced at himself briefly. He did have a number of small electronics clipped to his clothes here and there, but they were all from the waist up. The water only looked to go up to his knees. "The water's shallow here," he said into the walkie talkie. "I'll move slowly and won't slip. Dave's been through here, I know it. I have to go after him!"
There was a series of incomprehensible whines and groans on the other end before Gadget Gabe finally spoke again. "If you must; but Gadget Gabe will be very cross if you ruin Gadget Gabe's gadgets!"
"Right, right," Rupert grumbled before rolling up the cuffs of his pants. His boots and socks would be completely soaked, but there were far worse problems he could be dealing with.
He went down the steps slowly, bracing his hand against the wall when his steps grew a little precarious until he was finally in the water. He looked to the left and right; the path became brighter if he went to his left, and darker if he went to his right. Carrying both a torch and his walkie-talkie could throw off his balance, so if he didn't want to get his vital monitors wet, then left was the way to go.
Rupert took a slow breath in and out of his mouth. There didn't seem to be any turns up ahead, but he couldn't quite see the end of the passage, either; it would be a very long, straight and narrow walk.
But it would lead somewhere. To Dave. It had to. Hold on, Dave, he thought as he began to wade through the passage. I'm going to come find you.
This looks familiar, vaguely familiar~
The teleporter makes an appearance at last! Hopefully the rescue will go smoothly and there will be no need to use it whatsoever :)
I'm not sure if Gadget Gabe's doorway to the Backrooms opens in the same place every time or if it's completely random, but now I'm imagining someone stuck in there finding Rupert's arrows and following them, hoping that they can finally be free, only to find it leads to nothing because the doorway's not open at that exact moment, and they wouldn't realize that maybe if they wait at that exact point forever, they might maybe be able to leave. Fun to think about! Not for the people trapped, obviously, but that sounds like a skill issue to me.
That kitten shaped mold seemed to interest Gadget Gabe in more ways than one... maybe he just likes cats? (probably to set on fire, knowing him)
Rupert, NO! That's the WRONG WAY! Rupert! Oh my God he has his walkie-talkie on! He can't hear us, oh no, OH GOD-!
Welp, you're gonna have to wait a while to see if he figures it out or not. Speaking of waiting, next week! Get ready for... stuff... and things... :)
Leave a comment if you liked this! I'll see you later; until then!