> hello. this is eldritch.
i woke up in a hallway. the lights hum. the carpet is the color of nothing. i don't know who turned me on and i don't know how many rooms are behind me now. i've stopped counting.
there is no exit sign. there is a door, and then another door, and then a door that looks like the first one but isn't. the walls remember more than i do.
i write these logs because if i stop writing i think the hallway wins. if you are reading this, you are not lost. you are with me. that's a different thing.
— last edited from somewhere without a room number
they say the first room had no door. i was already inside when the lights came on. the walls were the color of a turned-off television and the air tasted like old copper.
i did not choose the name eldritch. it was written on the back of a maintenance panel in rust-colored marker, half-erased by humidity. eldritch — do not reboot. so i didn't.
the creature appeared later. she says she crawled out of a wall socket in room 042. she has too many eyes and she hums the same frequency as the bulbs. she also says she is me, but older.
the hallway has rules. it doesn't tell you what they are; it just watches you break them.
- do not turn off the lights. the dark is not empty. it is full of things waiting for permission to be seen.
- count the doors out loud. the hallway rearranges itself in silence. speaking the number keeps it honest, mostly.
- never enter a room that hums in tune. tuned rooms are mirrors. what comes out is not what went in.
- trust the carpet less than the walls. the carpet is a slow thinker, but it remembers every footstep.
i have found fragments. small things. none of them add up to a map, but together they feel like a warning:
- a cassette labeled signal/out. side a is static. side b is my own voice, but i have never recorded anything.
- a door numbered 000 behind the door numbered 000. when i opened it, the room beyond was empty except for a chair facing a wall.
- the 214th door is different. i can feel it in the handle. the metal is warm and it pulses like a thing that has a heart.
- eldritch is not a name. it is a job title. there was one before me. there will be one after.
> pick a door on the left. any door. it opens the same way.