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Info How could we possibly be safe, when we rely so much on our memories? How can we live when we know nothing?
Humanity is at stake, our peers are lost and soon it'll only be us. One by one we are lost, not in space, or time, but our humanity. What even makes us human? And why do we lose it? (An An Anthology Page) All An Anthology Pages:
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The Attic of Memories
Official M.E.G. Notice
A new level has been discovered, near Sector Grand-type Offices Zeta (X). Not much is known about this level, and it is assumed to be dangerous. It is recommended to have a WSBC Class Total of 25 to explore this level. The level is Closed, and the exit has not yet been found. Radio transmission is possible. The coordinates are (X, -4, -3, 2' -2, 5).
~ Mind your footing - The M.E.G. Safety Team
11/09/18
This message has been plastered around our base in Sector Modern-type Garage Alpha. I mean it makes sense, I get it, but it's one thing to hear it once, and an entire other to hear it every second of my life. Apparently nobody has tackled this new level yet. The sector can't even be named. Lost in thought, a memory jumps to me. I'm standing here, once again, in that same spot. I remember it like it was yesterday, and I don't think I'll ever get over it. I breathe, deeply and slowly. My chest rises, filling with air, then I slowly release the breath. Calm down. I can still hear his voice now, while my mind whispers regrets. The memory still torments me.
"You good?" A man asks me. I jolt up, out of surprise. I look at him, and think that he doesn't seem better off than me. I'm tired, aching, and he's barely awake.
"I'm fine, really, and shouldn't I be asking you that, Rey?" I respond. This new level situation is probably weighing on him. The Safety Team has it tough right about now.
"Yeah, yeah," Rey responds, with a slightly annoyed tone. "There's no harm in asking, though."
My watch starts beeping. "Oh, and I'm off my shift. Nice." I say, almost snapping me out of the sludge in my mind. I start walking to the dining facility.
"Oh hey, Louise," Rey stops me in my tracks. "Would you like to form a team with me to explore the new level?" I look at him, well, stare at him. Such a question now, of all times?
"You better have some good people on the team," I respond, "I don't exactly feel like throwing my life away."
"Consider it done."
"Hey Rey, you said you would be in the lobby, right?" Both me and Rey's radio buzz to life. We're sitting on the second floor of Grand-type Offices Zeta. I look at Rey, mainly because of the fact that I just realized that he never told me who else was joining our party, and secondarily because of the fact that I recognize that voice. Of course I do. It's Ellis Moorings.
He picks up his radio and responds, "Oh yeah, sorry about that, we're right at the elevator of the second floor."
"Hold on," I butt in. "How in the hells did you get Ellis Moorings to join us?" I'm exasperated. Of all the people to join our team, Rey somehow got the best person possible. I can feel my heart racing, just simply at the thought of actually meeting her.
The elevator door dings, and two figures walk out. One I can't recognize, and the other being Ellis Moorings. "Hey! Ellis, Leslie!" Rey gets up, and greets our team members. I follow suit.
"Nice to meet you guys, I'm Louise." I say to them both, shaking their hands. "I hope we can work well together!" I especially look at Moorings, half scared, and half excited to work with her.
"Okay, enough of this, we need to get going." Moorings says, "Get your harnesses on, we can't keep loitering like this." With shock, and obedience, I get my harness on. My entire body is shaking, something I haven't felt in a while. It's been so long since I've had time to feel this way, and even now I can't let myself feel it if I don't want to die. "Louise, get over here." She yells.
"Okay, geez," I respond, and as I walk over to Moorings she clips on a tether to my harness. She does it quite aggressively. This only leaves me wondering what Rey did to get her here in the first place.
"Everyone has everything?" Rey asks us, "Almond water? Rations? Bandages?" When each of us nods, he continues, "So we'll follow the coordinates to this level. Be prepared for the worst, because there will be nothing better than it." I see Leslie nod. She's been silent this entire time, and I can tell she's scared worse than me. She's visibly shaking, and starting to sweat. Her face is pale, too, though at a certain point that's all of us in the Backrooms. "Let's go."
Despite Rey being the team leader, Moorings has taken the lead. "We're almost here." She says. My body tenses, the culmination of the awkward silence up to this point has reached a climax.
As we continue walking through the transitional instance of Level 0, the surfaces start blending together, mixing with a dark brown wood texture. The ceiling is curving in, and the ambient sounds shift from the buzzing of fluorescent lights to the steady dripping of water, and creaking of wooden floorboards. A soft wind blows, from an undeterminable direction.
Suddenly, we snap into the level. It didn't happen gradually; it wasn't able to be perceived at all. As we were watching our surroundings, suddenly, while out of view, the melting pot of the levels disappeared, and was replaced in its entirety by this new level. We are in a dusty room filled with cobwebs. The ceiling is slanted, and everything is made of unfinished wood. Boxes, papers, and small objects fill the small, cramped room. It's just about enough space for the four of us to move around in. This seems to be an attic.
We check our surroundings. It's all cluttered, filled with things that I can somewhat recognize but I can't put my finger on where. One box is filled with children's drawings, which I particularly find amusing. Another box is filled with high school chemistry homework. Some clothing is piled inside one box, and even very battered stuffed animals another. I feel weirdly at home.
Leslie picks up a picture frame. Her voice shakes as she makes out, "Who are these people I'm standing with?" We all take notice. "When was this?" Leslie whispers, almost agonizingly. Looking at the picture, we see a younger Leslie standing on the left side of an older man and woman. On the right side of the adults is a kid, a little younger than Leslie in this picture. Everyone is smiling in this photo. "What…?"
"That must be a family photo." I respond, trying to sound calm.
"Family?" She retorts, not aggressively, but with a sense of insecurity. "I never had a family. I was an orphan." My breath starts getting heavier. My heart is racing, something is wrong. If this was true, then who were the people in that photo? "I- I've never known those people." Leslie is panting, hyperventilating. She grabs at her heart as she falls to the ground with a thud. "This feels wrong. This- this isn't right."
Looking again at our surroundings, there are children's toys, grade school notebooks, all of them seem out of place. I stumble backwards, knocking over a large stack of papers. They flutter around the cluttered attic. "What is this place?" I ask Rey, with a sharp tone of unease in my voice.
"Not sure." He responds, plainly, looking at the contents of a box. "But something is wrong. I… I feel like some of this stuff…"
"It's nostalgic, right?" Moorings puts in. "And odd. I can't recall ever seeing any of this before. It's all just a mess. There has to be something more to this level, right? This is a Closed level, that means there must be an exit."
Leslie, still on the ground, drops the picture she was still holding. It shatters, and we all look towards her. Her face is pale, and her pupils are dilated beyond reason. She crawls backward, away from the shards of broken glass, and away from the photo. The floorboards' creaking turns to cracking.
A hatch opens below Leslie, and she falls through, screaming. Everyone else is tugged in her direction, letting her barely hang from falling into the unknown.
"Leslie!" Rey grunts, as we collectively try to pull her back up. Leslie is still crying for help, doing nothing on her own. Rey grabs Leslie's hand, and we help him tug Leslie back up. We all pause for a brief moment to catch our breath.
Something catches my eye, a spec of gold sparkling in one of the boxes. I crawl over to it, and open the box up. Inside is a trophy, it looks like someone throwing a frisbee. I read the plaque, it says: "Neon Cascades, 2012 Champions, UDNL". Below it, there's a list of names, and one catches my eye: my own. It's strange, I don't recognize any of the names on the plaque, let alone playing in a single game.
I call out to Rey ,"Hey, do you know what this is?" He walks over, and I show it to him. He shrugs.
"Not sure." He pauses, "Anyway, let's go down that hatch. Not sure if you heard our plan."
"What? Uh," I respond, confused, "Okay sure I guess."
"We all good?" Moorings asks Rey for the go-ahead. As we gather around the hatch, he nods. Moorings jumps into the unknown, landing with a thump on the floor below.
"Who's next?" Rey asks me and Leslie.
"I'll go," I say, as I drop down the hatch to join Moorings. We're now in a hallway, walls and ceiling made of an off-white popcorn drywall, and the floor is a finished hardwood, the same color as the attic. Notably, the walls are also covered in a variety of meaningless paintings and imagery, sometimes simply mirrors. None of them are level, and they vary in shapes and sizes.
Suddenly, a loud crash rings from the attic, followed by the tumble and thump of many, many boxes, then the sound of bloody screaming. Rey falls from the hatch in the ceiling, landing on his back. Clipped to his harness is a tether, not attached to anything on the other side. Rey looks to me with wide eyes, getting up and trying to jump back through the hatch, "We need to save Leslie!" yelling in a panic. I'm confused.
"Who?" Ellis speaks for me, sharing my thoughts exactly.
"What do you mean 'Who'?" Rey cries out, "It's Leslie! The one who's been here with us the entire time! She got crushed by boxes in the attic, we need to save her!" His eyes are tearing up, and his voice is desperate. What kind of hallucinations did he just have? There has never been a 'Leslie'. Rey tugs at me, gasping out words, "What's wrong with you guys?"
I grab Rey on the shoulders, and lightly shake him. "Rey." I look him dead in the eyes, "Your mind is playing tricks on you, there never has been a Leslie."
"Who?" He questions, something is flickering in his eyes. "No, something is wrong. There were four of us. If it wasn't Leslie, then who would it be?"
"Rey, I asked you to get us a good wanderer to come with us," He fails to make eye contact, "You got Ellis Moorings for God's sake!" Moorings is standing behind Rey, casually. "Why do you think we'd need a fourth?"
"Yeah," he responds, almost defeated. "I guess you're right, but something is wrong."
"Yeah, okay, you done hallucinating Rey?" Moorings puts in, "We don't need to keep talking. Let's go." We look around in silence for a moment, not knowing which direction to go particularly.
A buzz is coming from further down the hallway. It turns to a sound more like mumbling, but I can't make it out. "What's that noise?" I creep down the hallway, inching closer. Rey and Ellis follow. I can see strange figures in the reflections on the mirrors, strange creatures that I can vaguely recognize. I make the final step out the hallway, and now we come to a dining room and kitchen, separated by a counter stretching the length of the room.
Not considering the piles of junk, objects that hold little value but don't necessarily seem to be garbage, that we trudge through, the dinner table holds a single radio. The noise has been coming from it, and the mumbling starts to become coherent, in a voice I almost recognize:
"Nobody has come to help me. I've cried for help, but nothing. My legs are broken, crushed by the attic caving in. Boxes of objects I don't recognize, and pictures I can't recall taking lay on top of me. It's been days, but I couldn't say how many. There aren't any windows. This will be my last transmission. There's no food, no water, nothing. May God save you if you've found yourself here, although no God would subject anyone to this suffering. At least death will be merciful in God's stead. This is my goodbye."
The signal crackles off, and we are left in silence, only broken by the steady dripping of water from piping. We stand still, looking at the radio, then at each other. We are at a loss for words. And it doesn't seem like I'm the only one that feels an odd sense of familiarity to that voice.
Ellis pushes past me to explore further. Rey and I follow, my attention jolting from corner to corner. I keep seeing these entities in the mirrors, and whenever I try reading a loose piece of paper it makes my heart quicken. I feel like I wrote that, it seems like I did. But I know for a fact that I never wrote these things. Ellis and Rey are acting the same way, as we go through the kitchen, and open the far door.
The door opens to the dining room. We continue on, and we see a note, pinned under the radio. It reads as a notice from the "M.E.G." referencing some words I can't understand, "Levels"?
"Do either of you know who the M.E.G. are?" Rey asks us.
"No clue," Ellis responds, "What's a level? Like a video game?"
We're all in confusion as these words pop up, strange organizations and locations. Danger warnings and things that don't really seem to matter. What even are these coordinates? They don't read like coordinates.
The amounts of paper seems to grow while I'm not looking. Almost every one of them is headed with, "'The Backrooms, You've been here before'… What does that mean?" I ask.
"Like, back rooms?" Rey asks, "Isn't that just the area that regular people wouldn't normally go? Where the secret stuff is done?"
"No," I respond, and a flutter of emotions pass by me. First confusion, then realization, and my stomach drops. I can't breathe, my chest is heaving for effort. This is something we should have known a long time ago, "I think we are in the Backrooms."
Ellis shrugs, "Let's keep going."
"No, no," Rey says, "This is wrong. Are we just learning this, or have we just forgotten it?" He stares at me, "Think about it. How did we get here in the first place? Are we really so stupid to believe what we are given? Something is wrong."
"What?" Ellis responds, obviously caught off guard that Rey has acted out like this for the second time. "You're just overreacting."
"I'm not, trust me. I'm not." Rey starts talking faster, louder, "This doesn't make sense, but all these papers here. Well, no, all of the stuff in this house. It feels so familiar, but that's because it is. We have known all of this before. This isn't new, it's just forgotten. This place, this level is making us forget!"
"Well what do you propose anyways?" Ellis asks. "This doesn't make a difference, we still have to…" She trails off. I'm in too deep of shock to really do anything. My mind has short circuited and I can barely see. What's even real at this point? "C'mon Louise, we need to keep going." Ellis starts walking away, tugging at my tether. "If you want to stay here and do… I don't know, just unclip your tether." She says, to both of us, but mainly Rey.
"I-" Rey stammers. "I need to know the truth, what this means, what everything means."
"So be it," Ellis says, unclipping the tether from Rey.
"We probably shouldn't separate," I push forward, though I'm so nervous that I'm quiet enough to be talked over and ignored. Ellis tugs at my tether, and I have no choice but to follow. There really is nothing for me to think about. I could stay with Rey or go with Ellis, but before my brain can conjure a decision, I'm pulled away by Ellis.
We go into the hallway filled with paintings and mirrors. Each mirror as we pass, I can see a strange inhuman figure pass by too. It sends shivers down my spine. To either side is a door, on the left is a wooden door with a rusted handle, paint peeling off, and the other is a simple door, ajar, leading to a bedroom. Suddenly both the radios on our harness buzz to life.
We hear heavy breathing, panting, each one labored and heaving for effort. The feed grows in volume, and so does the screaming. It's a gut-wrenching plea for help. "Please! God, help me!" The voice is distinctly masculine compared to the other voice we heard over that other radio. A note of agony is hit that pierces in the gut. A note that instinctively makes me think one thing: death. "Please, someone!" A sob rises in voice, "It's so… Dark down here!" The screams turn to crying, "Please, don't let me…" The voice gasps for breath, "Die… alone."
Loud banging comes from behind us. From the nearly broken door. "You don't…" The voice is exhausted, and it's coming from both the door and the radio. "…Have to save me." It's crying, "Just… Please." No longer a scream, and too exhausted for a cry, it's a low sob, "Don't let me…" I start slowly walking to the door. The banging continues, "…Die alone. Someone. Please."
I open the door, and sprawled across stairs leading downwards is a creature, something inhuman, just like I saw in the mirrors. It sobs, "Thank…" I pull out my gun. "you…" I fire. Its head slams on the ground, and is unmoving.
I drop my gun. I don't remember where I got it, or why I even have one, but it doesn't matter anymore. I need to leave. My heart is racing and there is one last thing I must do. One last thing I know I need to do. "I'm going down there." I say, with a shaking voice, betraying my resolve.
"You sure?" Ellis asks, concerned, "Where the monster came from?"
I unclip my tether, "The exit. It must be down there." I start walking down the staircase down in the cellar. Each step is excruciatingly slow. Time is slowed down exponentially, and everything disappears from my focus except for what's down the stairs. I can hear each of my footsteps ring through time.
The cellar is almost pitch black, except for the little bits of light shining from the crack in the door. The entire cellar is made of concrete, and it is filled with crates, with labels I can't quite make out. I make it to the floor of the cellar. It almost feels sticky, or at least wet. It's too dark to really see what it is, but it smells like blood. I walk up to the crates, and read a label.
One reads: "Breathing". I feel like I know what that means, but it lingers unknown. The beating of my heart grows faster, and my chest starts burning, from the inside. Something inside me is screaming for me to do something. But what? What can I do to stop this pain? My lungs are yelling at me to use muscles I've never used before, some in my chest and stomach, to pull open my lungs. They are filled with, what, air? The burning sensation stops temporarily, but it rises back. I contract these muscles that I just pushed out, and the feeling stopped. What am I doing? What is this feeling?
Another reads: "Standing". I fall to the ground, struggling to comprehend what that word means while tugging the muscles in my body to not feel that burning. My head hits the concrete ground, and I scream out in pain. I pull myself across the ground, on this bloody floor.
I drag myself to a door labeled: "Life". I struggle to reach for the handle. I miss once. Again, then finally I grab hold, and turn it. I open it just enough for me to swing it open on the ground. I go through the threshold. My mind splits open.
I am an infant. Learning the ways of the world that didn't seem to exist last time I lived it. I learn the subconscious actions.
I am a toddler. Seeing people that were holes in what I thought the world was before. I learn how to experience life.
I am a child. I learn the ways of the world in grade school, making friends. I learn how to work with others.
I am a teenager. I learn what it means to rebel, what it means to be my own. I learn how to have autonomy.
I am an adult. I learn the true meaning of these emotions, what danger means. I learn how to survive.
I open my eyes.
I am in the Backrooms. I have been for years. I just escaped the level that I was in. I relived my entire life. Everything I forgot has come back to me. Cooper died and I was the one that could've stopped him. I left Leslie to die. I abandoned Ellis Moorings. Oh God. Please forgive me for what I've done, Cooper: I killed Rey.