Unnumbered Level - "Agoraphobia"

A soft breeze from the ceiling fan wafts over you and tickles the pages of the book you have open on your lap, the thin, sharp corners brushing against your fingertips. For the millionth time, perhaps more, your eyes wander across the small room that you’ve been granted as living quarters. It’s comfortable; it has a bed and a fridge and the other necessities you’d need to keep yourself healthy and alive. There’s even a working radio and a few more books you use to keep yourself entertained.

It’s small, and it could be better, but you make it work. Some would call it cozy. You don’t argue with that notion.

You’ve been here about a week or so; there hasn’t been any weirdness. Occasionally, the power goes out, but nothing malicious pays a visit. It tends to come back after an hour or so. Maybe more if you’re really unlucky. You assume that there’s nothing else here but you, but every now and then there’s a small something that makes you think otherwise. A movement out of the corner of your eye, a pinch or chill that feels wrong, a rattling sound that you can’t quite pin the direction of: any number of things in similar nature have wandered into your thoughts in the stretched-out quiet before sleep.

Most times you don’t pay it too much thought, but some gashes remained in the wall from when your paranoia took over. That’s just part of living in the Backrooms, though, isn’t it?

You’re comfortable here.

By Backrooms standards, this is a perfectly normal living situation for a settler. A pretty good one, too. You rarely interact with much of anyone, and even then it’s just through your phone. You don’t mind that, though. You’re perfectly fine with your loneliness. So many people have much less accommodating places to call home, places that can barely don the name “shelter”. You’re one of the lucky ones.

There is one thing, though, that frequently disrupts this methodic, almost monotonous way of life: a door. A door that leads outside.

You haven’t opened it. You’ve gotten close to doing so at times, standing before it with your skin brushing against the cold, smooth metal of the doorknob, but you always hesitate and decide against it. You know where it leads, you know you can open it, but you don’t.

You don’t know what awaits you back home. You don’t know if your family or friends are still alive or if they’ll even welcome you back if they are. You don’t know if anyone will even recognize you, or if you’ll just be a stranger wearing a familiar face. You have no home there. You have nothing to your name, no backup plan if all goes wrong, you don’t even know if outside is even safe to you anymore.

You don’t know anything about the outside.

You could die the second you step out there.

And what of it if you find everything just as you left it? What will you say to the people you abandoned, the loved ones you left heartbroken, their loss a wound that never quite stopped bleeding? How will you look them in the eye? What excuse could you possibly have for your absence?

No one would believe you. They’ll just scoff at your ignorance of the pain they felt.

No matter what waits for you on the other side of that door, you will be helpless. Alone. Vulnerable. Weak.

The thought of it makes you dizzy. You take a few deep breaths, sit on the edge of your bed, your head returning to the familiar numbness as you listen to the soft rattling of the ceiling fan above.

That’s all you can do here. Sit in this feeling, here in your small room with your books and radio, wait for the courage that will never come. You’ll follow the same routine and eat the same meals, pace around the same corner whenever you get antsy. After all, the same means you’re safe.

The door will always be there. You can leave at any time.

But you never will.

Why would you ever want to?

You’re one of the lucky ones.