I messed up.
Thanks to a ritual in our school's occult club, a stupid little game with black magic we had no business touching, we managed to summon Cthulhu. No, I mean literally.
I watched all my friends get reduced to flesh and gore in seconds, the whole school turning into puddles of blood and broken bodies.
I thought I was lucky to escape, I thought I had gotten away clean with this one. But I was wrong and instead fate had not spared me.
In the end, I was swallowed by the Great One himself.
When I opened my eyes again, I was lying in a narrow bed in a room that did not belong to my world - at least not the one I knew.
The ceiling above me was made of dark wood beams, the walls were plain but old, and the whole place had the heavy feel of a Gothic fantasy novel.
For a few seconds, I just stared, trying to understand whether I was dead, dreaming, or perhaps both.
My body felt real enough and so did the cold air on my skin.
I was on the upper bunk of a bed pressed against the wall on the third floor, and from where I lay I could already see the room around me.
It was small and cramped, with a simple table, a chair, and a wardrobe that I could bet a few bucks was older than my entire life back in my previous life.
Nothing in the room looked modern. Nothing looked familiar for my modern brain of the 21st century to relate to has been remotely from my time period.
I sat up slowly, keeping my breathing steady, and forced myself to look around instead of panicking.
I got down from the bed and walked to the window.
Outside, the world was covered in a pale white fog that swallowed the street below.
People moved through it in dark gothic clothing, their coats long, their collars high, their steps calm and formal, like they belonged to some old era that had never fully died.
The street itself looked clean but in a strange way, with stone buildings and narrow roads that made the place feel more like a different century than a different country.
I turned away from the window and looked at the table.
There were books everywhere. Not a neat stack, but enough of them to make the room feel crowded and lived in.
I saw titles on alchemy, philosophy, and metaphysics, all written in neat faded lettering.
One was called The Twelve Principles of Lunar Transmutation. Another was Meditations on the Hidden Structure of the Soul. Beside it sat Treatise on Ether and Spirit.
There was also Notes on the Silent Geometry of Blood, The Mirror and the Ashen Gate, and On the Genealogy and Lineage Names of House De Vere.
They looked like the kind of books that for all intense and purposes should have been locked away, not left out on a table like this.
Near the books, I noticed a small key resting on top of one of them.
Beside the key, there was a bloodstain on the page, and next to it a clear fingerprint dragged through the red mark.
Someone had touched it with bloody fingers, and the print had dried there.
I stared at it for a moment, then glanced at the drawers beneath the table.
There were three of them. The first was locked. The second and third were already open.
I crouched and checked the second drawer first.
Inside were stacked playing cards and a few old romance novels, the kind that looked worn from being read over and over.
One of them was a version of Romeo and Juliet, though the names had been changed.
It was called Julian and Elara.
The third drawer held medicine. Not just one kind, but several different types. Bottles, powder packets, pills in small paper wrappers, and a few dark-looking drugs I could not identify.
The whole thing felt awkward, like I had stepped into someone else's private life and found a little more than I should have.
I stood there for a while, thinking.
The key looked familiar and after a moment, I realized why. It matched the keyhole on the first drawer.
I took it from the table, slid it into the lock, and turned it.
The drawer opened with a dry click.
I pulled it out slowly, and what I saw inside made me freeze.
For a second, I forgot to breathe.
It was as though a blurry montage of scenes played in my head, scenes I didn't fully understand, but I knew intuitively for some reason they were extremely important and and their relevance where of close relation to my current predicament instantly.
My fingers tightened around the edge of the drawer as my mind tried to catch up with my eyes.
I did not have time to think about it any further however something happened in the very next moment that made my heart jump.
The handle of the door twisted.
I could feel my head snapped up at once, my heart kicking hard against my ribs.
I turned toward the sound, my every muscle in my body going tight, and stared at the door as it began to open.
*Creek* *Creek*