The red light is still taunting me around the corner. It’s like a pair of eyes watching me from the darkness, but I know there’s nothing really there. I can stand next to door frame, I can stick my hand through and feel the hallway, but there’s still nothing there. I know there isn’t. I step through, and return on the other side, trapped as per usual.

I’m not confined to the living room, however. While that hall is “blocked off” so to speak, I can still rummage around the kitchen, my bedroom, and the upstairs, but I’m afraid to go up there. It’s even darker up there than it is down here, and every so often I hear a creak above me. I know it’s silly to be afraid, but how am I supposed to feel while trapped in this nightmare I can’t seem to wake up from?

There’s pipes that run through the floors between the levels. I know for a fact it’s just them creaking. That does beg the question though, if I really am the only person here, then how is there water still flowing? And why is there water but no power?

With all the time I’ve had to sit here by myself, I’ve had a lot of time to think about what’s going on. I have a few theories, all equally plausible but some worse than others. The first theory I have is that I’m dead or in a coma. It’s kind of a cop out answer, you know, like that’d be really lame. Also it’d be existentially terrifying for me because I’d rather not be trapped here for eternity. If I am dead, I wonder what I did to deserve being here, trapped in this dark facade of my family’s house. This certainly doesn’t feel like heaven, so I must be stuck in some kind of limbo or hell.

I choose not to believe this, though. Aside from the fact that it’d be really depressing and would drive me mad, it doesn’t really make things add up. A better theory I have is that the apocalypse has happened. Like I said, equally terrifying but at least I’m still on Earth and it’d explain why the power is perpetually out and there’s no one outside. Still, I can see some dim lights outside like the sign at the end of the street so again, it doesn’t really explain anything.

Maybe I’ve crossed dimensions. Does that even make sense? I don’t know. It seems pretty fantastical, but then again something fantastical has happened here. Maybe I should just start believing in the impossible.