Dennis stood petrified at the sight of his corpse slumped over his PC, his lifeless eyes frozen in the exact direction he now stood. The monitor still glowed faintly, illuminating the stiffened fingers resting on the keyboard, while a faint sour smell hung in the air like something long forgotten and left to rot.
From the corner of his dirty room filled with filthy clothes, empty cans, and garbage bags, several medical officials slowly pulled his body away from the desk while another team unfolded a stretcher with practiced indifference. Their gloves brushed against stained fabric and greasy surfaces without reaction, as though they had seen far worse. One of them muttered something while adjusting his grip, and another began checking the rigid limbs as if cataloging an object rather than a person.
His parents stood by the door, both stiff and awkward, while an officer explained the situation in a calm professional tone. She spoke about cardiac arrest, possible heart failure, and the estimated time of death, but Dennis could not clearly hear her words because their voices sounded distant, like echoes traveling through thick water. Their lips moved, their heads nodded, and yet everything felt disconnected from him, as if he was watching a muted recording of his own death.
In fact, the world itself seemed darker than usual, the colors washed out and drained, like someone had dimmed reality.
"I'm dead?" he mumbled, yet there was no surprise in his gaze, only a dull acceptance.
When Dennis was young, his homeroom teacher once told him he would become a failure and never amount to anything in life. She said it bluntly after he submitted another blank assignment and laughed it off, thinking she was just being cruel.
Guess what.
She was right.
Dennis grew up into a fat slob living in his mother's basement, surviving on junk food and endless gaming sessions while days blurred into nights and nights into weeks. He avoided calls, ignored responsibilities, and drowned himself in anime, cartoons, and online worlds where he could pretend to be someone else. His parents slowly stopped asking about his future, stopped knocking on his door, and eventually behaved as though he did not exist. That was why it took them one hundred and twenty eight hours to realize Dennis had slumped over his computer and died from cardiac arrest, his body quietly decaying while the world outside continued moving without him.
This was not even a sob story about a boy with a tragic past. He was just a failure who chose fiction over reality and comfort over effort, and he died living that shallow life to the fullest.
Suddenly, Dennis felt cold.
A biting chill seeped into him, crawling through his chest and wrapping around his spine. He hugged himself instinctively as his shoulders trembled, his gaze darting across the room in search of the source of the cold wind. The windows were still locked, the curtains unmoving, and the door remained shut, yet the temperature continued dropping like he was standing in an open freezer.
That was when he saw it.
A mighty figure stood behind him, easily over eight feet tall, its massive frame wrapped in a dusty torn cloak with a hood that completely hid its face, leaving only darkness beneath the fabric. On its back were three pairs of batlike wings folded tightly, their outlines barely visible beneath the heavy cloth, while its hands remained cupped and hidden deep within its sleeves.
Dennis's mouth opened wide but no sound came out. He felt warmth spread down his legs as his body betrayed him, his knees trembling violently while his muscles refused to obey.
The cloaked figure moved forward, yet it did not look like walking. Its robes brushed the floor, but its body glided seamlessly, like it was floating through the air. Every motion was smooth and silent, unnatural in a way that made his chest tighten.
Within seconds, it stood directly in front of him, towering over Dennis and casting a suffocating shadow that swallowed him whole.
"Follow."
The word came in a strange language, yet Dennis understood it perfectly, the meaning appearing directly inside his mind.
Without waiting for a response, the figure turned, and the room began to tremble. The air ahead of it tore open like fabric being ripped apart, revealing a single massive crimson eye embedded in the void. The eye rotated slowly, scanning the room while bathing everything in a blood red glow. Its gaze finally settled on Dennis.
His mind went blank.
Fear surged beyond anything he had ever felt, so overwhelming that his thoughts simply shut down. His body trembled uncontrollably while his consciousness dulled, as if his mind had forced itself into numbness to prevent him from collapsing entirely.
After staring at him briefly, the eye slowly closed.
The space beneath it cracked open, and a massive ancient stone passageway rose from the ground, its structure wrapped in thick bloody thorns that pulsed faintly like living veins. The doorway itself was filled with gray mist, dense and unmoving, revealing nothing of what lay beyond.
The cloaked figure began moving forward.
Dennis's body followed.
His legs moved against his will, each step forced, stiff, and unnatural, as though invisible strings dragged him forward. His mind screamed, but his body ignored him completely. In a last act of desperation, his blank gaze searched the room for help, for anyone who might notice, for anything that could stop this.
The medics continued working.
His parents kept listening.
No one reacted.
No one looked at him.
No one even sensed what was happening.
That was when Dennis finally realized.
He was completely alone.