"Haaah—!!!"
Arthur's eyes snapped open. He jolted up in the driver's seat of the van, gasping for air like a drowning man breaching the surface.
"Hack-cough! Hrk—!"
Hands gripping the steering wheel like a vise, his body convulsed. He threw the door open and emptied the acid from his stomach into the rainwater on the asphalt.
The downpour continued. The wipers maintained their rhythmic sweep across the windshield.
Arthur was drenched in cold sweat, looking like he had just been fished out of an ice bath. Trembling, he raised his hands. His right fingernails were still broken from clawing the window earlier, edged with dark scabs, but they weren't the mangled ruin ripped out by the doorframe. His collarbone wasn't broken. Shaking hands touched his face—the skin and flesh were still firmly attached to the bone.
"Micro-sleep again? A hyper-realistic hallucination..." He gasped, muttering neurotically, trying to soothe his scrambling brain with the excuse.
But when he pulled back his left sleeve, his voice choked off. His pupils shrank to pinpricks.
Imprinted deeply into his left wrist and forearm was a dark purple frostbitten claw mark.
The sheer size of the grip was staggering. The indentations from the fingers wrapped around his wrist and extended down his forearm. Only that hand could leave a mark like this.
Everything just now wasn't a hallucination!
The dispatch terminal in the passenger seat still glowed with its cold light: Arrived at destination. Must hand-deliver to customer.
"Fuck the package! Fuck the order!"
Arthur shattered. The hyper-real agony of crushed organs and flayed skin left him without the courage to even glance back at the apartment building.
He slammed the gearshift into reverse and floored the gas. The box van roared like a beast. The tires spun out of control in the flooded street, kicking up white smoke before the van tore into the rain.
Run! Get out of this block! Get away from this damned building!
Eyes bloodshot, Arthur stared straight ahead. He sped down the straightaway heading out of the city, hitting eighty miles per hour.
The scenery outside the windows began to distort. The street signs warped and stretched in the rain like melting wax. The rain hammering the windshield began to defy gravity, streaming upward across the glass.
Within minutes, a dense fog of rain appeared ahead.
The van smashed through the fog like a bull. But the moment his vision cleared, Arthur slammed on the brakes with all his weight.
Screeeech—BANG!
The van dragged two long skid marks across the asphalt, the smell of burning rubber filling the air. Caught in the headlights, less than thirty feet away, stood the rusted iron security gate of the old apartment building, waiting quietly in the downpour.
He had circled back.
"Impossible... I drove straight!"
Arthur bit the tip of his tongue to force himself awake. He cranked the wheel, whipping the van around, and floored it in the exact opposite direction.
This time, he didn't even dare blink. He stared fixedly at the road, but the spatial dimensions around him were being compressed by some unknown force. The buildings on either side overlapped and flickered like a broken slide projector. The perfectly straight street folded inward in a grotesque warp at the edge of his vision.
Only five minutes passed. The road ahead twisted without warning.
That brutalist concrete building loomed through the windshield again.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
He kicked the door open, abandoning the van without even pulling the keys. He sprinted into a narrow alley next to the apartment—a shortcut leading to the next street.
He ran for his life, his lungs heaving with broken wheezes like a damaged bellows. But the brick walls of the alley seemed to pulse faintly, as if breathing, and the puddles beneath his feet reflected no shadow of him running.
The moment Arthur burst through the alley's exit, his boots nailed to the ground.
The exit didn't lead to another street. It connected directly to the lobby of the old apartment! Those concrete steps reeking of urine were right under his boots. Overhead, the failing fluorescent tube still buzzed with static.
Arthur's legs gave out. He collapsed in despair onto the muddy steps.
He finally understood the rules of this death trap.
Space was folding. That force was dragging him back like a tightening noose.
Ten minutes, five minutes, two minutes...
With every escape attempt, the time it took to pull him back shrank, bringing him closer to Room 716.
If he stood up and ran again right now... He didn't dare think about it.
Arthur wiped the rain from his face. Using the wall for support, he stood up, stumbled back to the van parked outside the gate, and threw himself into the driver's seat.
Shaking uncontrollably, he dug a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his soaked windbreaker pocket. Fumbling, he caught one between his lips and pushed the lighter in.
A cherry-red ember flared in the dim cabin. Arthur took a deep drag, the harsh smoke making him hack violently, but the nicotine slightly sedated his breaking nerves.
He stared fixedly at the steering wheel, his panicked brain searching for a way out.
"Call the cops... Yeah, the cops! The FBI, the military! This isn't something a normal person can deal with!"
Grasping at his last straw, he shakily pulled out his phone.
The screen lit up. The signal bars in the top left displayed a stark red 'X'.
No Service.
Arthur refused to accept it. In the US, even without a SIM card or cell service, emergency calls can force their way through if there's even the faintest ping from any cell tower. Thumb trembling, he punched in '911' and hit dial.
Ring... Ring...
It went through!
A surge of desperate hope crossed Arthur's bloodshot eyes. Pressing the phone tight against his ear, he screamed into it like a lifeline, "Help! I'm at St. Jude's Old Apartments! There's a monster here! I—"
His voice cut off.
There was no calm operator asking his location on the other end.
From the receiver came a sound of flesh tearing. Immediately followed by a guttural scream leaking through non-existent lips—
"Huuuuurk—! Aaaagh!!!"
Crunch... squelch...
The sound of bones being crushed inch by inch, of a face being flayed alive.
Arthur's blood turned to ice in his veins. Because he recognized it. The voice screaming in agony on the other end of the line wasn't someone else. It was him!
It was the desperate death wail he had let out ten minutes ago, when he was dragged through the four-inch crack of Room 716, his organs crushed and his eyes impaled!
Clack.
The phone slipped through his rigid fingers, dropping onto the floor mat. The screen flickered twice, then went black.
The cabin was silent, save for the digital clock on the dash, silently flashing its pale green numbers.