Young Writers Society

Instead of the exit, there was an unfamiliar hallway with red tiles.

Kody felt a rush of adrenaline as he stared at it. His mind was flickering between rumors he had heard other students mention just barely in earshot and the stories he had seen that were similar to this. This was like something out of Tales of the Unusual.

He shifted uncomfortably as he stared at the hallway.

He didn't want to make that comparison. He didn't want to make any comparison. This didn't feel real - couldn't be real - but he didn't suddenly wake up when he pinched himself. He hadn't ever done drugs. And this school was always taken care of, so it wasn't like there was some mysterious mold that was making them all hallucinate.

He took an unsteady deep breath and returned his hand to his pocket.

He couldn't let himself think of this was like a horror comic that never ended well. There were other comparisons he could make. Maybe this was more like Toilet-bound Hanako-kun, where the ghosts were generally friendly and just forced to follow the rumors made. It was still creepy sometimes, but they always survived.

...At least, he thought the main characters did. He was behind on the manga.

"This doesn't make any sense," Kody muttered. He had no explanation, but he was also starting to realize it very much did. A hallway had suddenly appeared earlier. Even more importantly...

He looked down the hallway.

"...So that was why our phones couldn't get a signal," he finally said, his voice a little louder than before.

"W-what?" asked Amber, "What do you mean?"

He glanced over at Amber.

"It's a trope," he said. "Phones always stop working in a horror series."

It was only afterwards that he realized comparing this situation to the horror genre might not have been the best idea.

"Can we not compare this to a horror series, please?" said Susan, almost shaking. She was still trying to process the fact that somehow the school was acting almost with a mind of its own. She ruthlessly squashed down that idea. The last thing she needed was for her imagination to run wild.

Secret took a few steps back, sheer panic bubbling in her throat. She swallowed hard.

"Okay, okay, this is not normal," she said.

She turned around and met a blank wall. Secret gasped.

"This is definetly not normal," she said, pointing to it.

Secret pushed the wall, spreading her arms around. "It-It's a dead end!"

She turned back to the red hallway. "Does that mean we have to go through it?'

Kody turned back towards what should have been the rest of the school.

Instead, he found himself staring at the same dead end that Secret had just noticed seconds before. He didn't want to keep drawing comparisons to horror series, especially after that girl's comment, but this felt like a horror series.

He took a deep, unsteady breath.

"I think we have to," he said, joining Secret in staring at the red hallway. "I don't think we have any other choice."

He took the first step down the hallway.

Susan turned to where they were looking it. There was a dead end staring back at them. This was not good. She slowly took a couple of deep breaths, repeating over and over in her head that panicking was not a good option at the moment. This was going to be a long night

"So...um...wh..what do we do?" managed Susan once her breathing was more or less under control.

Kody glanced back at her.

"I think we have to keep walking through this hallway," he said, "and I hope that Supernatural wasn't right on how unfriendly the supernatural can be."

Amber scowled and walked into the red hallway purposefully. There was absolutely NOTHING wrong with walking into an unknown hallway, right? After ten steps, the hallway got darker. At least, that's what Amber thought . . . before she found a missing tile.

And that tile wasn't just missing . . . the entire spot where the tile was supposed to be disappeared.

It was just a square hole.

"Guys?" called Amber, "There's something fishy about this."

Not wanting to be left alone, Secret looked at the others and followed the girl (Amber?) into the hallway.

Despite her looking sure of herself, Amber's face grew wary and nervous as they all walked down it.

Amber suddenly stopped, and Secret nearly bumped into her. She was about to ask her what was wrong when the other girl spoke.

"Guys?" called Amber, "There's something fishy about this."

Secret stepped beside her and looked down, balking at the floor.

An entire tile was missing. There was nothing but darkness beneath it.

A shiver crawled up her spine.

"Watch where you step guys," said Secret, over her shoulder.

Susan tiptoed up to the where Amber and Secret were both looking at something. She knew that walking on her toes would do nothing to silence her footsteps further but it felt appropriate for some reason.

She gasped as she saw the missing tile. The ground beneath seemed to drop down into endless darkness.

"Should..we may...maybe drop something in there?" said Susan, " because that's how people figure out how deep things are, you drop an item and then count the second using the acceleration of free fa....I'm sorry...I ramble when I'm nervous." She blushed bright red and mentally slapped herself for sounding so silly in front of Secret.

Kody glanced down at the missing tile.

That wasn't exactly like what he had seen in horror things before. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to take comfort in that or not. If it was a horror trope, then he would have been vaguely familiar with what happened next. Now that he didn't know, he couldn't tell if it would be something relatively good or absolutely terrible.

...This wasn't how he planned to spend his afternoon.

"I have some homework," Kody volunteered. He crouched down in front of the tile, slid off his backpack, and reached his hand in for the homework in question. "It was going to go in the recycling bin, but I think dropping it into a potentially endless void is a good alternative."

He dropped the paper ball into the darkness.

He waited.

And he waited.

And he waited.

After what had to be a minute or two of staring at the whole and counting the seconds underneath his breath, Kody finally raised his head and looked back up at the others.

"I think it's bottomless," he said, trying to keep his worry out of his voice but failing miserably. "Or a very long fall."

Susan couldn't help the small smile at the endless void comment, it was a brief bit of humor in an otherwise terrifying situation. Her temporary good mood vanished when the homework continued to fall. She could feel the chill sink into her as the homework fell farther and farther.

And Kody voiced what she'd been thinking. "I think it's bottomless. Or a very long fall." She could sense the worry in his voice and icy fear continued to grip her.

"Umm...let's avoid stepping on that then," she managed, knowing how stupid and obvious her comment was but she felt like she had to say something at that point. It was better than staring in silent fear. She suddenly wished she hadn't told Daphne to go on home without her despite her offering to stay and help a few million times during the day. Her sister would probably be more terrified than she currently was but she would at least have someone to hug.

"Let's keep going," said Amber, trudging forward, ignoring whether the other three would follow her or not.

Before long, she reached another bottomless tile. An ominous feeling built up in her stomach, but she continued on, weaving around the anomaly. Then, there were two bottomless tiles.

"I-I don't think this is right . . ." Amber turned around towards the others.

A pit was forming in Kody's gut.

"I don't think it's right, either," he agreed. There were more bottomless tiles now. If this really was like the horror things he had read and seen, this had to just be the beginning. He couldn't see why it would only happen with a few tiles. "I think we need to be prepared for-"

He caught a glimpse of more bottomless tiles down the hallway.

Carefully dodging them, he pushed past even further.

To his horror - but not really his surprise - the floor was getting to a point where normal tiles were becoming the rarity. If they were going to get around the bottomless ones, they were going to have to jump.