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He didn’t know where he was. Jack had no idea where he was.
One minute, he was walking back home from the store, and the next, he was in this weird, non-Euclidean-looking place.
It had the carpet of a hotel and the cheap grocery store lights that emitted a soft buzzing sound. If you weren’t distracted by your own ragged breathing and stuttering heartbeat, you’d be able to hear it.
Jack couldn’t.
He looked, horrified, at the dirty yellow walls and heard only threatening silence. The stink of old, molded carpet wouldn’t leave his nose. He stood up slowly, surveying his surroundings. Maybe he’d made it home, and he was just dreaming. Dreaming of… waking up in a crappy hotel with stained walls and flooring.
...This was worse than Vegas.
He stood up, steadying himself and holding his head. Any minute now, he’d wake up to get ready to go back to his dead-end pizza job, no matter how much he hated it.
*Any minute now...*
Jack turned instantly, seeing nothing yet hearing a loud, inhuman roar that didn’t sound animalistic either.
His first instinct was to run as the sound got closer, looking around in worry of the source. A tall, dark and skinny.. something flashed in the corner of his eye.
He slowed down gradually after the sound faded. Jack panted, leaning on a wall with torn wallpaper. He began wandering around the foreign area around him, searching for someone…something…an exit, perhaps.
Several hours later, he decided he wanted to wake up. Something he’d been thinking about for the past few minutes was whether it was worth it to try to get out of this place - if it was even real. He didn’t like this dream anymore. He just wanted to wake up or get out.
He wanted to leave.
Jack began pinching himself, scratching his arms, even banging his head against the mono-yellow stained walls.
It didn’t work, and now all he felt was a minor headache and the stinging of a dark red liquid flowing down his arm. He groaned, sliding down the wall and sitting on the ground with a careless expression. “I just... I just want to leave...” He mumbled to no one.
He glanced up at a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision. A hallway with what looked like an elevator at the end of it came into view. He stood, a breathless smile making its way onto his face. Was it over? Finally?
He ran towards it, almost crashing into the doors as he chuckled, unbelieving.
And boy, was he right not to believe it.
The elevator closed its doors, Jack going up in a much better mood than he had been in. Which, in fact, didn’t last more than a minute before the elevator stopped abruptly with a loud bang.
Jack tripped, falling down face first in the small compact space, and what he could only describe as glitching through the floor.
He was never getting home now, huh?