The pain was drowning my head in a river of sorrows. I couldn't focus on anything. I could see that the box was laying a few feet in front of me, and I could see that it somehow threw its top flaps open, exposing its insides. But it was facing away from me. The headache made me physically ill and I threw up a small amount of bile and water on the already haggard carpet. The lurching of my esophagus muscles made me more disoriented.
As I began to gain my focusing ability, I rolled my eyes upward and I almost didn't recognize where I was. The SHAPE of the hallway was the same as it had been every time I had walked down it, day after day. The smells were the same, too, even if a little vomit was added to the palette. It wouldn't be the first time I smelled puke in this hallway. But it was different.
Everything about it.
It was…alive!
Still kneeling down, my attention was kidnapped by subtle movements in my peripheral. I looked left, at the wall, which had always been an infectious yellow hue, full of scratches and stains, and the occasional baby cockroach exploring its surface. Not now, though. No, it was divine. The walls were bathed in a glistening turquoise, so powerful that the dark corner shadows that called these walls home were overtaken by an aqua radiance that I could only imagine was the perfect color of hope. The crown molding, while still fabricated the same, now resembled a thick, clear transportation system, almost like a set of twisted, clear arteries, that I could easily see cells and plasma racing through. And there definitely WAS something racing through the crown molding. The surface of the wall looked stagnant at first, but when I looked closer, the wall was breathing, much like the box did when I first discovered it. There was even a faint impression of a pattern on the wall. It was the same hand that was printed on the box.
But the most beautiful thing about the walls was not the glowing turquoise, or the mysterious circulatory system.
There were things creeping out of the electrical outlets. Not THINGS, I guess. More like…vines. Pitch black, inky vines cascaded out of the outlets, and were spreading all over the turquoise surface, each branch and arm having a mind of its own, crossing each others paths and having no real destination. The wall looked like someone had a huge straw and was blowing these vines in every direction, similar to what you do with india ink in art class to create controlled splatters, but I felt no wind in here. The walls were simply alive. I was mystified by the sudden allure of the walls, which is why I was so shocked when I turned my gaze from the wall to the center of the hallway. Much like the hallway to the right of my apartment, this hallway was also populated, but not with people. Well, not REALLY with people, but with a gang of…things. "These are fucking for sure not…not human," I remember thinking. "FUCK."
Out of sheer terror, I stayed frozen on the ground, on all fours, like a medieval beggar. The hallway was crowded with human-LIKE beings, but…their features were exaggerated. Like cartoons almost. Like…something that you could easily put in the "Out of the nightmares of an imaginative Japanese kid" category on Jeopardy. That's probably the best description. Was it horrifying? At the time, yes, as I have never before seen anything like what I was staring at, and what was staring back at me. The out of proportioned heads looked like they would have been too heavy to move gracefully. Their skins were all different colors, mostly bright and textured. Bugged out eyes and huge inflated teeth. Some had extra limbs jutting out of the side of their geometrically challenged heads, some had fur-lining from some type of wild stuffed animal from an imaginary island where plush toys roamed the jungles and hunters spent years poaching them for bragging rights at the toy conventions. In fact, giant toys is what they ALL looked like. Giant, terrifying toys. I needed to get to that staircase, but the maintenance stairs will have to do. There was no way I was going to make it through those fucking things.
They began to advance toward me. I couldn't really tell if their eyes were looking at ME or the BOX, since they all had strange, muppetty eyeballs that looked rather ridiculous. Regardless, I was scared shitless.
I jumped up, turned around and began to run back toward the humans, which I figured I would at least have a chance against, even if it IS a slim one.
Immediately, the pain in my head and a second heave of bile reminded me to quickly reach back and grab the box, closing it up and cradling it back in my left arm…