The warm lights of the old town were far behind him now. The street narrowed here and the streetlamps had given out blocks ago. The houses leaning in close, sagging loose, their windows dark. The gutters were thick with old drugs and rot. Trash heaps on every side.

Nothing good ever lived down here.

Third from the end was his. It always sat higher than he remembered, more jagged than he remembered. It always does, especially at night.

As Opium grew closer, the crunch from the pavement was all that could be heard. tonight was unusually very quite. This scared Opium.

He slowed without deciding to. His feet found the quietest angles of the pavement on their own.

His arms ached from the climb. He'd shoved the bag straps up to his elbows hours ago and stopped feeling them.

His eyes went to the attic window. Although the window was open, the rope wasn't there. It wasn't on the ground, nor nearby.

Gone.

Ropes don’t just vanish.

He looked at the ground again. The base of the wall. The bush at the corner.

Nothing.

Without the rope, there was only one way in. Through whatever was already inside.

His chest pulled tight. His mouth had gone dry. He could hear his own heart now, fast and uneven in his ears.

He didn't want to. He really didn't.

But standing out here only gave whatever was inside more time. He turned and faced the front door.

He hesitated. The house was quiet. He needed it to stay quiet. For a long second, all he could do was stand there and listen.

He stopped at the door. One hand on the frame. Counted three seconds before he trusted himself to reach for the handle.

Ignoring my warning, he reached for the door handle and eased it open. It took almost half a minute to open the door wide enough to get inside quietly with his two bags.

Opium slipped inside and eased the door shut behind him just as slow.

The latch clicked shut behind him.

Hair on his arms stood up all at once. His grip on the bag straps went rigid. Every dark angle of the room had suddenly turned into something he had to check.

The entering room was a square living room, maybe fifteen feet across. The TV sat in the top-left corner, dim blue light washing the nearby walls. A single couch faced it, wrapped in blankets. To the far top right, a kitchen opened through an archway; beside it, a closed bedroom door on the far bottom right. Midway along the right wall stood the door he needed, the closet that holds the entrance to the attic.

'If that couch moves, I'm out.'

Everything else was darkness. No lamps. No sound. Dim blue from the television was the only thing keeping the room from pitch black.

Blue doesn't last long.

Each step felt stolen, as if blaring alarms might scream, consuming the dead quiet atmosphere, at any moment.

He hugged to the wall, clutching the bags tight to kill their crinkle, eyes locked onto the couch. The blankets loomed like a body.

He edged forward until his angle changed.

'It's empty.'

His eyes snapped to the kitchen. Nothing moved in the dark there. Then to the bedroom door. Black. Closed. Still. He made himself look at the closet beyond it.

His only way out.

He slowly crept toward it. The bags felt heavier, every breath shallow. Passing the couch was bad enough. Passing the bedroom was worse. He kept his face toward the bedroom door the whole way. Wouldn't give it his back.

After a few more careful steps, Opium finally reached his destination. The closet door.

He reached for the knob.

This door was even more creaky than the first. Opium would need to be patient if he wished to remain silent, easing it open inch by inch.

His fingers closed around the knob. He turned it by fractions. He paused, listened, turned more. A sliver of dark widened along the frame. Half an inch, then another half.

As he did, something cold and soft brushed his ear. It took a second for him to understand what a was.

A breath.

Opium froze. Every muscle locked in place, his heart sank.

He turned slowly, unwilling to believe what his mind was telling him. Wishing he'd imagined the breath. Wishing he hadn't felt it.

Then his heart shattered.

Her face was the first thing he saw. A pale shape in the unlit kitchen, just barely visible against the darkness. Then the rest of her filled in. Long white hair tangled around it, the same shade as her skin.

An oversized black sweater swallowed her frame, the hem nearly to her knees, edges fading into the unlit room behind her.

She was looking straight down at him. Watching him without blinking.

He didn’t breath. He couldn’t, as if his lungs were engulfed with terror. Every hair on him stood. The cold from her breath was still on his neck and now she was right there in front of him and his body had already decided to stop working.

All he could do was stand there. His hands had forgotten the knob. His feet had forgotten the floor.

The TV died.

No warning, no flicker. The blue light was there. Then it wasn't. The dark was instant and complete.

He could feel her in the dark. The still of her, an arm's length from him, no farther. Her slow breathing.

Then a voice came as a soft whisper.

"Today, I'll make some bowl… cereal."

She turned and walked deeper into the kitchen, away from him.

Somewhere across the room, a cabinet opened. Wood on wood. Soft. Domestic. The breath he had been holding came out shaky.

Then his body caught up. He pulled the door the rest of the way open. The wood creaked long and loud through the dark as he slipped inside.

He hauled the closet door shut and clamped a hand over his mouth at the sound it made anyway. His foot found the first step of the pull-down stairs automatically.

His hands found the locks. One by one. Fingers slipping, missing, finding only because he made them.

When the final lock clicked into place, he sagged against the door, frozen, only then beginning to process what had just happened. Around him, everything was pitch-black.

Still stricken with fear, he took a second and breathed.

"What… the… fuck."

Finally summoning the courage, he crawled up the stairs, scrambling toward the narrow opening above.

The attic entrance was absurdly small, barely wide enough to squeeze through. He hurled his two bags inside first, then twisted and contorted his body, forcing himself into the cramped space.

Once through, he seized the pull-down staircase and dragged it shut, fumbling with trembling hands until every lock clamped the folding stairs into place.

At last, he was safe.

His room. His only refuge.

—

The smell of it hit him first. Dirty clothes, instant noodles and stale energy drink. It was all his.

He flipped the switch and small lamps came on, three of them, spreading a low amber wash across the sloped ceiling. Not much light but enough.

The room was barely the footprint of a king-size bed, the walls pinching inward where the roof came down. Grifter, Marvel, Star Wars and other posters covered them, all salvaged. Some were creased, wrinkled, and one taped back together along a diagonal tear.

Instant noodle cups occupied the corner to his left in a stacking tower. Snack wrappers and empty energy drinks littered all over the floor.

He plopped into A makeshift chair, the specific arrangement of blankets, clothes, and cushions he'd adjusted so many times it had learned the shape of him.

A baby monitor sat on the floor beside it, screen already glowing the familiar dim blue of the room downstairs. He'd left it on. He always leaves it on.

Across from him, an old TV stared back, older than the one downstairs by at least a decade. A gaming console sitting beneath it with a stack of cases beside it.

“Finally,” he whispered, letting out a deep sigh.

He closed his eyes and let himself sink into the chair for a moment. Letting the events from today melt away.

...

Putting the snack bag down right next to him, he grabbed the prized blue bag.

Undoing the tight knot, he reached inside.

Pulling out first was a fresh pack of batteries. He swapped them into the baby monitor and checked the screen. Still showing downstairs.

"Now onto the good stuff."

He quickly pulled the first one out, new and still sealed in its plastic, catching the dim glow of the TV. Then the next. Then the next. His hands moved faster than he meant them to, pulling each one out before he'd finished looking at the last. Five brand new video games stacked in his hands.

Underneath was a controller, also still locked in it's box.

'Aw Hell yeah, tonight's gonna be fun. Too many choices'

'Damnthey all lookin' good.'

Shuffling through the games, he found one strange one in particular, holding it up, he observed the cover.

‘Hmm… this one looks kinda interesting. Think this was the last on the shelf.'

"Eh-..."

'I swear i've seen this word before.'

"Ennn-d-d"

"End... EndL"

"Endless!"

"Re"

'The hell?! There's gotta be no way that this "q" fits in. Prolly made up.'

‘I've seen this game before but since it was the last one on the shelf, it's bound to be popular.’

<No… the new Grafter game first. Everyone seems to be talking about it.>

'You are always such a Grafter nerd, didn't we just replayed a Grafter game a week ago?'

'Nerd. I don't want to.'

<i>

'Don't act like you were not interested the whole time.'

Opium hugged the game by his chest. “My Preciousss.”

He pulled the disc out, slid it into the console, and flicked on the old TV. The screen blinked once, then steadied into screen light.

The console booted to its home screen. A grid of glowing tiles smeared faintly across the old TV, the new disc already pulsing at the front of the row. He hit X.

'This better be good.’

Lately, Opium had been drawn to those grim punishment-driven style games. Slow, merciless things built on death and repetition.

He was … ill-suited at first. The deaths stacked up. Hundreds. Then thousands. He once died on the same boss for a week straight. Still, he kept playing. I'm not into this sort of thing, but when he does beat his opponent, the rush is unlike anything else.

As Opium waited for the game to load, he reached for his the new controller and started to pry it open the box with his fingers. Pulling it out, he gripped it in his palms.

Even though it was the same exact shape of the old one, he found that this one felt better in his hands. Playing with the buttons and swirling the joy sticks had a slight resistance that was meant to be broken in to.

He quickly paired the new controller and tossed his old one behind him.

Reaching in his snack bag, he crack open a hot, violently shaken energy drink. Fizz exploded over him. When it finally settled, he greedily chugged it down, leaving the can nearly empty.

'Damn what the hell is taking so long, this shit better have good graphics.'

After finishing off a good portion of the snacks, Opium picked up the game case while the game loaded and began to study it.

The image on the front showed a lone character standing before a glossy black castle wreathed in crimson fire. Out from the dark clouds, A massive glowing blue crystal spire jutted from the sky above it. Carved into the crystal was the glowing number 50.

He flipped the case over. The back was covered in lines of small text. Way more words than he could deal with. He didn't even try. Behind the wall of words was a weird abstract pattern.

'Hey Buddy, I'll tell you what. If we finish this game early or if it's trash, we'll play the Grafter one next.'

He stared at the cover again, eyes catching on the title.

'It's called Endless something.'

He let that sit a second.

'Either they were lying, or we're gonna be here for a long, long, looong while.'

<It's length will depend entirely upon your skill. So yes, I'm afraid we may be here for quite some time.>

'Hey! What's that supposed to mean? I'll Have this done quick ya hear. Just watch, you'll see.'

Just as he finished viewing the game case, the game loaded.

'Finally!'

He lingered on the intro screen, studying it.

The colors clashed awkwardly. The font felt wrong, and the UI felt very different from the video game standard.

There was only one option.

—Play—

Instantly after pressing play, the screen went black. Not screen black.

true black.

Before he could react, he felt a small tug at his chest. It grew strong, then stronger, then strong enough to drag him toward the screen.

"What th-"

The force hurled him forward. The screen filled his vision in an instant. He threw his hand up, bracing for the impact on the old glass.

But he passed straight through.

'WHAT THE FUCK!'

The television didn't shatter. The glass let him through, and the pull kept going.

His small body was dragged effortlessly toward the black abyss.

He twisted hard and yanked his arm back, fingers clawing at the TV's edge. His hand caught the frame.

For a second, he held on.

The pull continue to intensified.

'What the fuck is happening. What the FUCK is happening!'

His arm screamed. Joints strained. It felt as if his shoulder were about to tear free.

The room came apart.

Wrappers. Snacks. Loose junk lifted and shot past him, pelting his face. On the far side of the room, trash skidded across the floor toward him. Furniture groaned.

He knew he couldn't hold forever, but he refused to let go.

The metal wrench from his makeshift lock tore free, rocketing across the room. It caught him clean across the forehead.

—Welcome, Player, to….

The last thing he saw was his room in reverse, shrinking, the amber lamplight getting smaller until it was just a point in the dark, and then nothing.