The Backrooms

{$title}Languages:

We were seeking out a safe, habitable, and empty level on which to set up base, which is what this place was before the catastrophe. It was nothing but a vast expanse of grass and the occasional clump of fluffy oak trees, scarcely a single hill interrupting the flat fields of fertile land and flowers. It was the perfect place to set up base; the grass was always lush and green, and gentle rain fell intermittently to give us clean water.

Sir Sky was content then, watching us set up camp in the fields as he watched over ever-so-peacefully… We planted crops in the fertile soil and built a functional home base out of stones and other materials that we collected from the ground. For about a year, we lived peacefully on this level whilst trying to find a way out of the Backrooms. Unlike those M.E.G. folks, we were actually making an active effort to find an exit instead of living in comfort and setting up hundreds of outposts — we were searching for an exit to the Backrooms as a whole! We each only found ourselves back at base when resupplying was absolutely necessary and would catch up with each other on the rare instance that we crossed paths there.

However, despite the thousands upon thousands of expeditions we carried out, we couldn't locate a single new level or even the hint of an exit, while those M.E.G. folks were discovering them left and right, most of the time on fucking accident! (Forgive my profanity here.)

After a year had passed, we decided to host a meeting with the entire group present. In all honesty, our leader planned to disband the group; his eyes that were once starry and hopeful were now dull and black. I was always the one who wanted to keep pushing forward; after all, if we didn't give it our all, how could we be any better than those meggies?

Our leader's newly-minted grey hairs shimmered in the Sunlight as he picked up the microphone atop the stage in front of our scarcely-walled, roofless room in our main base.

"I… think I can speak for all of us when I say that I'm tired. I am tired from all of the work that we, as a team, have been putting into this project not coming to fruition. I've heard it all — 'when will we finally start making progress?'; 'what's the point of this if we can't even eclipse the dawned M.E.G. in progress?'; 'do you even know what we're searching for anymore?'. The last one hit me especially hard. After some long hours and days of careful consideration, I can't say with confidence that this is going to go anywhere. After all, life isn't so bad in here! Look at the peaceful place we've found! I'm sure all of you are just as tired playing the hero as I am. It may be time for us to accept our fate and take it in our stride."

His words were met with mixed reactions. Some, including myself, were disappointed, even angry at him for giving up on a dream we were all once so passionate about. Others were relieved and had resigned just as he had. Either way, we all have come to realise in one way or another, this speech of his was the signifier of our doom. Just as our leader was about to continue with his speech, Sir Sky uttered his first words, his voice booming louder than any speaker could hope to achieve, which would in turn become the beginning of the end.

The level's first ever natural disaster was one imbued with such hatred and rage that it massacred more than a quarter of the group on the spot; it was a hurricane, massive in size. Dark clouds rolled in with more haste than I'd ever seen before, embuing the hurricane with vicious thunder — yet not a single raindrop graced the grass. As the Sky had said, we were tired, disheartened, and demotivated to begin with, even without him making his presence known. Some fleed to the level's exits in a desperate attempt to escape, but they were all closed off.

I still remember the first time I saw each type of disaster unfold. We hadn't even had time to mourn our dead from the hurricane when the Clouds rolled back in, heavier and darker than before. Someone held their hand out from under the overhang we'd sheltered beneath — out of curiosity, I think, or maybe disbelief. Not a single one of us dared to speak about it afterwards.

Eventually, after three years of desperately running from acid rain that could melt through bone, flaming tornadoes that could pick up a building and burn through metal, and thunderstorms capable of splitting holes straight through the ground that we stood on, we had reached something new.

The edge crept up on us without warning. One moment there was grass underfoot, and the next there was nothing — just the Sky. The void wasn't dark. That was the worst part. It was the same open, taunting blue that had watched us suffer for years, stretching endlessly in every direction below as though it were perfectly natural.

We stood there for a long time without speaking. I'm not sure any of us had the words. The first one didn't say anything either. He just stepped forward. I didn't even realise what was happening until he was already gone.

I thought I would scream. I thought I would grab someone, say something, do something. Instead I just stood there and stared at the place where he had been standing, and felt the grass under my feet, and couldn't move; as we watched our friends take matters into their own hands, plummeting into the abyss, we could only stare into the void, craving just the glimpse of hope that our very group was supposed to provide. We all cried that day; I'm still not sure to this day how we managed to push on.

And now, years later as the group dwindles more, my comrades have all begun to let go of the hope that kept them standing on the edge of the void. We've been planting seeds, digging up tunnels, and dodging our troubles for too long. There are only about a dozen of us now that I know of, but there could be more that I'm unaware of elsewhere. That figure does not include Sir Sky, Mr. Sun, Clouds, and Wind, however. I've had the opportunity to speak with all of them at one point or another. Sir Sky seems to be the leader of the four, and though he is the one who orchestrates the violence and chaos on this level, they all seem to feel the same way about us. They see us the same as we see animals. We get no pity from the likes of them.

Sir Sky spoke to me most often, though I could hardly call myself lucky. He seemed to take an interest in me after all the time I've spent trying to keep hope alive here. We had many conversations, most simply his replies to me cursing him, but one of the most recent of them stuck with me the most.

Does one really have to have a reason to want to survive? Do you… beings not have any survival instincts? If there's a way out, I don't want to have died missing it. Plus, I carry the burden of thousands of my comrades, both dead and alive. Whether in body or in soul, you killed them all, and there has to be at least one person to come out alive to tell the tale.

If you haven't killed me yet, there's no point in giving up now. And even if you do kill me, then when I go to heaven I'm sure I could at least hold my head high, saying that I pushed on until the very end.

I've already told you that I will keep going. I've watched nearly all of my people die on this level; you think a few words from you are going to be what finally breaks me? Get it through your thick, alien skull that you'll never make me quit.

Sir Sky, you've killed thousands of people just to ask these pointless, obvious questions. Just mind your business and let me out of here, or shut your mouth.

My rage couldn't be measured. His words only pushed me further into a lake of my own hatred; all those friends I lost; those whose hope was lost… At the same time, despite his discouragements, he gave me the biggest piece of information and hope he ever could've. Escape was impossible… "almost".

I searched every inch of the realm, creating tunnels and pushing through the storms. Blazing whirlwinds fried my skin away to a raw, bloody red. Strong gales chopped through my sensitive skin. Raindrops akin to bullets slammed down onto my shoulders. I held the meaning of hundreds of lives in each hand. At some point, Sir Sky had had enough.

I thought I told you earlier that your every word is a waste of breath. You sit up there on whatever perch you have, too scared to face me head-on, don't you? All you really are is a pathetic being incapable of taking out a single injured man.

As if I'll believe your desperate cries. If you really can, then why don't you end my "miserable life" right here and now? You're powerless. Nothing but a cowardly figure hiding behind the Clouds.

I was on my back catching my breath after a tornado had passed — ribs aching, skin raw, staring up at the sky as the Clouds thinned out — when I noticed it. Right beside my hand that had been bloodied and torn apart by the violent Wind was a single patch of grass. Perfectly upright. Not cut, not singed, not flattened. Just standing there like nothing had happened.

I stared at it for a long time.

I had open wounds on both arms; my left ear had been ringing for three weeks from the thunder; I had watched people I loved get swallowed by this place in ways I couldn't let myself think about for too long; and this patch of grass — and all the grass for that matter — had never once, in all those years, been touched by a single disaster.

He was protecting it. All this time, through every storm he'd thrown at us, he had been careful never to damage a hair of his precious realm. I sat up slowly and looked out across the fields — still lush, still green, completely unbothered — and felt something that had been grief for a very long time quietly become something else entirely.

That was the base of my plan. I would start an unextinguishable fire, burning his perfect realm to smithereens. I started sneakily collecting kindling and scavenged a lighter and matches from my long-dead companions, then gathered wood wherever the trees were densest and grass was tallest. I expanded the tunnels evermore, concealing my plans from his gaze. I stored woodpile after woodpile underneath the strongholds of flammables and made sure to create a reliable trail branching off from the centre of the island that would spread throughout the entire island.

After months of preparation, I was finally ready. Lighter fluid dousing the ground, match in hand, and staring up at the sky, I proclaimed:

This unholy realm that you hold so righteously as to not sully a single hair of grass; this place that you've kept me trapped on for so long… Wish it farewell. You can't play God anymore.

He noticed it now, but it was all but too late. I lit the fire and watched it branch up from out of the tunnels, travelling from log to log and eventually creating an unstoppable inferno. With a wide grin, I stared as the wind desperately picked up, trying to fan the flames to no avail; they only grew larger with every gust.

Lightning rained down rapidly, and rain shredded through the burning trees even piercing the solid ground. With reckless abandon, Sir Sky was really trying to kill me this time, but that was exactly what I wanted. He was destroying his own home! Sun and Clouds and Wind all scolded him fiercely, but I had set him off.

I was safe in the tunnels until he let the tornadoes rip through the ground. He drilled a hole through the soil and quite literally picked me up, bringing me past the clouds where I could see clearly for the first time in so long. He told me off, but for some reason, something was off. If he was really trying to kill me all this time, could he not have brought me up here before? Regardless, he spoke:

It was blinding, it was frightening — I thought I wouldn't live to see another day. I thought my life was over as soon as Sir Sky had me in his clutches, screaming so loudly that my hearing went numb. But in an instant, the Sun washed away the rain. He burned so hot that he dried up the Clouds. With a burst of light, he stole the Sky in all his brightness, turning it a beautiful yellow. As the blue Sir Sky was oppressed by the blinding Sun, he uttered his last words.

I felt a soft smile form on his nonexistent face as the Sun engulfed him and the whole level fully. It felt as though he let it happen.

And so I started from the beginning.