Tick tick!
The sound of a working clock echoes throughout the room. A man and a woman with a permanent smile sat still on the opposite sofa, looking at me eagerly.
Their teeth, well structured. Jaw, well defined. Lips, glistening. Skin, glowing. Hair, well kept, clothes, pristine and straightened.
But... Their eyes?
Empty.
A black void inside them. No eyeballs, nor iris or a faint light, just darkness.
My hands started sweating profusely, my eyes maintaining eye contact with their void of eyes, their gate to their soul, broken.
Inside the McDuncan house hold.
The house was a rundown apartment. Leaking ceiling, sink, continuous dripping. Several bottles of alcoholic drinks, beveraged and bottles laid in a heap at one corner. A pile of injections and pieces of clothes at the other side of the room.
The light flickered. Surprisingly, the house wasn't left out with electricity, the television blazing with myriad of explosive colors, a family feud show going on.
The host of the show cracked souless jokes only an eight year old would laugh at. His voice was the only thing that gave this room life, with the two beings who sat across me with a happy smile plastered on their face, watching me with darkness.
Unsettling.
ACTION!
"And that concludes our latest episode of Pedro and Pascal inco, stay tuned for more...
TROUBLING.
"Oh, I almost forgot. We have a guest today..."
ACHING.
"Yes, a very cowardly individual, just looking at us behind those screens and reading these very lines and subtitles. You, sir Ayo."
PLEASE.
"Don't you abandon what you came here to do..."
My eyes widened open, my throat went dry in an instant.
"What...?"
The host started laughing.
At first, it was a chuckle.
Then a wheeze.
Then it twisted — wet and distorted, like metal folding into meat.
His fingers curled inward, then stretched, bones popping audibly. His temples throbbed, and his suit began to fuse with his skin — fabric dissolving into flesh like it had always belonged there.
His face unraveled. His eyes changed.
He was turning into—
Mr. Jesse?
"Help her, Ayo," he whispered, almost gently.
The TV snapped off. The screen shattered into silence.
I turned back to the sofa—
Gone.
The couple was nowhere to be found.
---
"What are you doing here?"
A girl's voice. Soft. Curious. Distant.
I turned.
She stood near the doorway, barefoot. Her frame was slim — too slim. Fragile like paper left in rain.
Her eyes were tired, lids half-lowered like she hadn't slept in weeks. Still, there was a strange energy flickering inside them.
She wore a loose white gown, frayed at the hem, hanging off her bony shoulders. Her hair looked ginger… or maybe brown? Hard to tell. The dull light gave no answers.
"I... me? I'm—"
"You're Ayo. Ayo Merlio, right?"
"...Yeah."
A silence stretched between us.
She tilted her head, inspecting me like a half-remembered dream.
"You don't recognize me?"
I scanned my memory. Nothing. A blur.
Faces and names shuffled in my mind like an unshuffled deck.
"...No. Not really," I admitted, my voice dry as sand.
She nodded slowly, chin tilted upward like she was looking past me now. "I see. So what're you here for, exactly?"
Something about her tone made my spine tighten.
So I asked, carefully:
"How do you know my name?"
She pressed a finger to her lips — and peeled back a thin layer of skin.
Blood beaded out.
"Whoa, hey—"
"It's fine," she said flatly. "It tastes sweet."
I froze. She wasn't fazed. Not even a twitch.
Her voice was too calm. Like peeling her own lip was routine.
"What're you doing in a place like this?" I tried shifting the focus, pretending like I wasn't unsettled.
She didn't flinch. "I should be asking you. Nobody's supposed to see this place."
"Huh? What do you—"
---
The light went out.
Complete darkness swallowed the
room — like ink flooding a bathtub.
Everything disappeared, except her. The white gown glowed faintly, hovering in the void like a ghost's silhouette.
She stepped closer.
"This place doesn't exist," she whispered.
Her voice sounded like it came from behind me now, then beside me.
"So I'll ask again. What are you doing here?"
"Ploring," I snapped instinctively. No hesitation.
A pause. Then:
"Liar."
That hit harder than I expected.
"And how'd you come to that conclusion?"
She raised a shaking arm — paper-thin — and held out a sigil. A faded circle with etched marks that sparked something in my mind. I'd seen it before.
"This is the sigil of Morgatha. How do you have it?"
I blinked. "...The what now?"
She stepped closer. Her gown brushed my arm. Cold.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I murmured. "Someone gave it to me—"
"Sir McAlister Love?"
She said the name like it meant everything.
My breath caught.
"...Who the hell is Sir McAlister Love?"
Her fingers tightened around the sigil.
Her frail hand trembled — not with fear. With remembrance.
And in that moment, I wasn't sure if I was dreaming, dead, or somewhere far worse.
---
Establishing shot.
I found myself from an entirely different space from the gloomy glitching room.
A large The room is vast—cathedral-like in scale—stretching so far that the edges disappear into a misty, white haze. Every surface glows with a sterile, luminescent whiteness: the floor is polished and bone-smooth, like bleached marble or the inside of a shell; the walls are seamless, curving upward as though the space was sculpted from a single, cold breath. There's no clear source of light, yet everything is blindingly visible, as if the room itself is exhaling illumination.
In the center of the room lies the ruined statue of the Virgin Mary.
Once it must have been majestic, taller than a man, arms outstretched in compassion, but now it lies fractured across the floor like a fallen saint. Her face, once serene, is split down the middle, one side gazing skyward in cracked tranquility, the other obliterated into dust and jagged remnants. One marble hand still reaches out, fingers worn smooth by time or worship—or something more frantic. Her torso is partially intact, the draped folds of her robe chipped and flecked with dark smudges, moss? soot? blood?
Around her, scattered pieces catch the sterile light with a disturbing kind of joy. The crushed remnants are arranged almost artfully: a foot set upright like a chess piece, a halo propped against a pillar like a forgotten hula hoop. Someone, or something, has been playing here.
Laughter echoes faintly in the room. High, childlike, distant. It seems to come from no direction and every direction at once. Shadows flit across the edges of your vision, though there is nowhere for shadows to hide. The air smells faintly of powdered sugar, and also of rust. The scent is sweet, cloying, and then—unmistakably—sharp with iron.
There are faint footprints in the dust surrounding the ruins. Small ones. Bare feet. They dance in erratic patterns around the shattered icon, looping in circles, then abruptly breaking into sharp, jagged lines like a tantrum carved into the ground. Some prints vanish halfway through a step.
Above, suspended in the white void of the ceiling—or maybe simply hovering midair—a faded mobile turns slowly. It's made of old rosaries, broken doll arms, and thin, gleaming blades, spinning lazily in defiance of gravity. It creaks as it turns, the sound oddly tender, like a lullaby played on a broken music box.
The whole space feels like a memory half-remembered: innocent at first glance, but brittle, like porcelain hiding a hairline crack. The room beckons with warmth and light—but beneath it all, something waits, giggling behind its hand.
Take 9
ACTION!
"What are you talking about?"
"den Mund halten"
I sat on the ground, the girl, Krish. Floating like a feather above the ground, turning to me with an expressionless face.
"Whatever that means."
"Quiet!" She bites back again.
"And what are you doing up there? I've told you several times I'm here to help you with your case. "
"I don't seem to have any problems."
"Yeah, I can see that." I replied, sarcasm laced my tone.
"Red."
"Red, what."
"Against porcelain."
I shakes my head, trying to wrap my head around what this mysterious girl was saying, but my brain growing a tumor with every attempt I make.
Thud!
Her body smashed the ground with full force, her head bent at certified death angle, blood splattered like the shape of rose on the floor, the crimson glow from the liquid a stark contrast to the white room.
"What are we doing here exactly?." I asked, although her body laid dead on the floor, she'll eventually--
*Gasp for air*
She breath in oxygen, her eyes wide as she clutched her chest, her neck reverting back to it's normal state.
"You're just being weird."
She turned to look at me, still on the ground, she cupped her hand like a magnifying glass on her eye, "you're not weirded out by my habits."
"I've seen some oddities, but this whole situation in particular was... Jarring to say the least."
And that was true, I've been in many situations that was out of this world, but this whole episode is crazy.
"I wouldn't want to bore the readers, so I'll give you our whole length of our conversation to figure out what my case is."
She twirled in the air like a ballerina, blood dripping stains on her previous position.
"Is that so?"
"Yes. Candy?" She snapped her fingers.
A woman, with empty eyes and a smile plastered on her face. Skin, glowing. Teeth, arranged. Hair tied to a bun and clothes exempt from folds.
She leaned close to me, a tray of different brand of candy.
"I'll pass thank you.." I pushed the tray away, my eyes narrowed.
"Suit yourself then." She said as she picked up a Popsicle and popped it in her mouth.
The absent eye lady stepped back with her usual chilling expression.
"Walk with me." Krish said.
Suddenly we were in another place from the white space. We were at the beach.
TAKE ONE.
SERENITY.
The sea breeze brushed past my thick afro hair, I closed my eyes and then opened them.
The grains of sand could still be felt from the bottom of my shoe, the air smells like salt and bitterness... But with a Dash of nostalgia.
I looked to the left and the right, they were both empty, not a single soul to be seen.
The sky caught my attention... I mean, why not, there's a literal large humanoid statue of Greek artistry and craft, it's features were happy but with a chilling running of red liquid running from it's eyes. I couldn't see the rest of it's body, it's neck standing at the edge of the water body.
ACTION!
Krish walked towards me, her hands on back with her voice humming a familiar tone... Vague but oddly familiar.
Krish walked towards the sea bank, her white gown now in pristine condition as it held no sign of the blood from earlier.
"Atem. What exactly do you feel is missing, eh, Ayo?" Her voice sharp.
"I don't know. Can you be sure for me?" I replied.
She tilted her head, her frail neck bent as if it's about to snap. "That doesn't make sense."
"In a London article of two men discussing how they'd murder a woman to appease their questioning fetish for gore, they were overheard by a child, brushing the child off as none threatening, the child told his mother."
Krish looked at me with a questioning gaze, although taller than me by 5 inches, she seemed... Small.
"What happened next?" She asked.
"Nothing. The men carried on their murder and killed the woman in the most disgusting way possible. It is this article that inspired the take for horror films using children as a plot device to not articulate their odd experience to the only people who could make sense of it."
Krish walked closer to me, her eye brow hanging up in question, "there's no point in that story of yours."
"There is, although disjointed." I shielded my hand over my eyes from the increasing brightness of the sun, "the point being, 'are you the child in question?'"
Krish widened her eyes, "No," her words faltered. "I'm stuck. I'm confused but enlightened."
I chuckle, not out of amusement, but from stupidity. "Seems like we're in the same boat."
"I'll be asking then..." I continued. "What you're experiencing is a state of Limbo."
"What's that?" Her voice picking up tone.
"You're infected with the supernatural sickness, called a Case. Yours is showing the first symptom, that being the state of Limbo."
Krish stared at me with a straight face, her eyes quivering violently.
"I"
CUT!!!