This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/likeeyedid on 2024-10-30 14:53:35+00:00.
I sat in absolute darkness, the kind that wraps itself around you and pulls the air from your lungs.
"Welcome, welcome, welcome to those who are children and those who long for the time they were!" A familiar voice called into the darkness but I couldn't pinpoint where exactly it came from.
"We are going on a very specific and wondrous mission today that is nothing for the weak-hearted. It is one that only a true adventurer can survive! And with that we welcome the one and only, the magnificent, the incredible…. JANIE!"
All of a sudden hundreds of bright lights turned on, blinding me for a moment. I blinked a few times, seeing neon green and purple colors all around me. As my eyes slowly adjusted, I realized that there were cameras in front of me while I was crouching on the ground on top of a sheet of plastic grass. My breathing became uneven, my mind was running in every direction possible, but my body stayed frozen. I suppose a part of me already knew there was no way out.
I closed my eyes and hid them behind my arms when I heard heavy footsteps moving closer. A damp hand touched my arm and I slowly looked up at the man who was the main guest of my nightmares.
"You are supposed to be dead," I whispered to the source of the purple color.
The man I knew as Dr. Warly simply shook his head.
"I can't die. The children need me," he said in a voice that was his but also wasn't. It sounded wrong, warped in a way. And his face appeared as if someone had glued it together. He grinned as my gaze swept over the patchy pieces of his skin.
"And as long as they believe in me and watch me, I will continue to exist. Now get up, sweet Janie. We have an adventure to go on. And for today, you are our main explorer. Do you think you can find your way out of the forest?"
Following those words, the lights went out once more, and hands reached out to grab me and pull me away. I kicked and punched, but it was no use. They wouldn't let me go.
--
When the lights came back on I was alone, at a different place, or at least that's what I believed because enormous pine trees suddenly surrounded me. This time the light was more dimmed, but it still wasn't real. I wasn't outside. No, it came from headlights. I couldn't see the cameras anymore, but I knew they were there, watching me, recording each of my steps.
"Warly, you motherfucker. Where are you?" I shouted, fear suddenly replaced by anger. I'd ridden myself of this place years ago. I was an adult now, far into my twenties and I thought I was safe but I suppose I never would be for the rest of my miserable life. They would always find me again.
"Is anyone else here?" I cried out. "Alex? Leigh? Anyone?"
The sound of laughter was the only response I received.
Many years ago, I wasn't even a teenager yet, when I was recruited to star in a program specifically made for children with a group of other kids my age. We would spend the day alone with the producers and camera people to film something we didn't quite understand yet and wouldn't even remember. It was an innocent show from the outside. Two boys, Alex and Leigh, and two girls, Millie and myself, who went on adventures led by a man named Warly.
The show was a clusterfuck of mind games designed to bring demise to everyone who watched it. Millie had died. So had the actor who played Warly. Children ran away from their homes, seeking a promised adventure and that was only the tip of the iceberg. It was so much deeper, so much darker that it was hard to comprehend, and for such a long time I didn't even think it was real.
But it was, and now I was living it again.
I got to my feet and tried to ignore how much they were shaking as I pushed my way through the fake trees. The artificial needles of the trees scraped my skin, leaving bloody marks but I couldn't bother to care about that. I had to find a way out. If this truly was a movie set, it couldn't be infinite. If I walked to the edge, I would find a wall and then hopefully a door.
"Our main explorer for the day has started her adventure. Will she make it out of the woods before the spirits find her?" A dark voice sounded through a speaker.
In response, children started laughing and then shouted out in glee, "YES!"
"But if Janie finds the way out, the show will end. Do we want that?"
"NOOO," the voices of the children screamed in unison. I tried to ignore the wrongness of it all as I kept fighting my way through the forest. I kept moving forward, everything around me started warping into a blob of brown and green. I was so focused on getting out that I didn't even look at the ground and so I didn't notice what was right in front of me until I stumbled over it, falling on top of it.
On top of him.
I knew it was a body before even looking. A cold body. I pushed myself away, dropping into my back.
"Even breaths, calm down. It's just a prop," I whispered to myself as I forced myself to look at him.
A bone had been jammed into his throat. His eyes were shut, and his green shirt was stained. My stomach turned from the scent of iron all around me. My hands were sticky and red, and I couldn't even say if it was his blood or mine.
Suddenly, the corpse sat up, his eyes opening wide as he took a deep breath. My first instinct was to scream but instead I pulled the bone on from his throat, just trying to get a weapon, when I realized that it wasn't actually inside of his skin. The bone was broken off and glued to him.
"Who are you?" I forced out, holding the shitty broken bone in front of me.
His gaze swept around, finally landing on me and that's when I realized that he was just as scared as me. Possibly even more.
But I had to keep my wits, it could be a trick. This was all a show after all.
"No, no, no," he whispered. "I was out. I was safe."
"Who. Are. You." I repeated.
Before he could reply, the voice of Warly spoke through the speakers again.
"Our main explorer has stumbled upon one of her old friends. Will they continue the adventure as a team, or will they brutally take each other's lives?"
The corpse who wasn't actually a corpse looked at me with pain in his eyes.
"I think I'm supposed to be Leigh."
I got up from the ground and started walking, my mind couldn't comprehend what was happening and I couldn't deal with it. That wasn't Leigh. I knew Leigh, I'd seen him not too long ago. But he had an eerie similarity to him.
"Wait," the wrong Leigh called as he started following me. "You're Janie. The real Janie, right? I remember you. Well, kind of. You were on the show. I'm-"
I turned around, facing him suddenly, and he took a step back.
"What do you know about the show?" I hissed.
He laughed darkly.
"I know everything."
--
With the wrong Leigh on my heels, I made it out of the fake forest and we found ourselves staring at a door.
"Any chance this will lead us outside, you think?" He asked.
I fought the urge to roll my eyes.
"Why were you so cold?" I asked instead.
"What?"
"Your body. You felt, well, dead."
"I have no idea. Maybe they put me in an ice bath, I don't even know how I got here."
I swallowed thickly.
"Are you gonna open the door?" He asked impatiently.
"I don't know. It seems too easy." I clutched the bone tight in my hand. "And I'm not sure if I can trust you yet."
"Right back at you," he replied in a dark tone.
"You go first," I said and took a step back. To my surprise he didn't hesitate before going up to the door and pushing it open.
A jingle played through the speakers and I followed the wrong Leigh over the threshold.
"What the hell?" he whispered.
We found ourselves on a different set. This one was supposed to look like a small suburban neighborhood. There were street lamps, fake lawns and a little road with houses on the side, decorated with skeletons, ghosts and pumpkins.
On the ground, right at the beginning of the road, were two plastic jack o lanterns.
"I think they want us to go trick or treating," I said.
"Yeah, hell no."
"Agreed," I mumbled.
We decided to walk around instead, to look for another door and avoid the middle of the set with the road. After what felt like an eternity, we still hadn't spotted a way out. Neither did we see any cameras, but they had to be hidden somewhere. I knew they were watching us because after a while of walking around the Warly voice spoke again.
"The explorers seem to be getting more and more lost, when they should be looking for their friends instead."
"They are in the house!" The voice of a little girl called out, followed by a giggle.
My companion's expression shifted and before I knew what was happening, he started running into the set, pushing the doors of all the wrong houses open.
I followed him from a distance until he kicked open the door of one with purple walls and his screams filled the entire hall.
--
He'd stopped screaming and fallen onto his knees, staring right ahead without a word. And as I collected my courage and walked up to him, I realized what caused his reaction.
The house was tiny, consisting only of one room, but they had furnished it to look like a proper home. There was a sofa in the middle and on it were three limp bodies, put in a sitting position. Their eyes were open and their expressions were empty, and I immediately recognized who they were supposed to be. One looked like Alex, the grown ...
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