This is a short story that I wrote shortly after my boards, back in the day when I was in the 10th Grade. It is a tangible manifestation of my obsession with the legends associated with the urban legend, "The Backrooms". It is a part of a broader trend of writing stories on the backrooms, which was quite popular then. I sincerely hope that you enjoy it!

1. The Backrooms (Vol. 1)
A Harrowing Ordeal in an Eldritch Location..

2. Quite contradictory to the eventual sticky and seemingly unescapable fate that I have met, my story has
quite a mundane origin. It was yet another normal midsummer's night. Pin drop silence prevailed in the
room except for the intermittent birring noise of the air-conditioner. I was wallowing in my freshly earned
freedom. My board exams had just concluded a couple of days ago afterall. Out of nowhere, my mind played
the fake fall trick on my body for some reason. Normally, I wouldn't have thought much of it, but well.. this
time around it was so strong that I actually fell off the bed. After what seemed like eons, I landed with a dull
thud. Now having spent about 15 years in my home, I knew for a fact that my bed wasn't at an altitude as
high as Mt. Everest. So taking that long to fall to the floor seemed a little out of place, didn't it? That was
until I discovered what I had happened to fall into...

3. As I slowly opened my eyes, whilst still caressing the elbow that I had fallen on, a bright blinding yellow light
flooded my eyes. My pupils constricted faster than a pissed off cat. I mean, my surroundings were
absolutely lurid. As I slowly tried to open my eyes, still partially covering them with my right hand, I realised
that I was in what seemed to be your quintessential corporate workspace of sorts.. just that it was totally
featureless, devoid of any furniture or any sort of human life whatsoever.. almost like the tenants were
handed an eviction order by the landord quite a while ago. It seemed unnatural to me. The floor was
carpeted; The carpet stank badly of human blood, which was rather ironic considering the fact that it looked
spotless.. "Weird", I thought... I just couldn't wrap my head around where I was. I was surrounded by this
myriad maze of segmented and completely empty office spaces as far as my eyes could see. The madness of
the head-ache inducing mono-yellow, accompanied by the relentless background noise of fluorescent lights
at a maximum hum-buzz, was turning my mind inside out.. I couldn't think straight, but then... The truth
struck me like a bolt of lightning. When I fell off my bed, I had actually been unfortunate enough to no-clip
out of reality and into what is called as "The Backrooms"... A seemingly neverending series of liminal spaces
with unimaginably vicious creatures lurking around every corner. These may even include some degenerate
individuals who have previously fallen prey to the backrooms and have gotten lost to the point that they have
lost their sanity and may even resort to cannibalism for survival. Right until that moment, I had considered
the backrooms to be a mere urban legend, a creepypasta, the stuff of nightmares, something that any
rational fellow wouldn't believe existed in real life. But well, unfortunately for me, my worst nightmare had
materialised, and I didn't have, even the slightest clue about the treacherous horrors that lay ahead of me...

4. For starters, I had already lost all sense of time and direction. I ran as aimlessly as a dog freshly abandoned
by it's master.. deserted, and with no apparent way out of my alien environment which could perhaps take
me back to the comforts of my home, that I had always taken for granted. But eventually, I entered a state of
resigned acceptance. I realised that running about hopelessly was going to do me no good, as I would
ultimately burn myself out and collapse in a heap, onto the floor, thus making myself a sitting duck..
vulnerable to any creature, lurking around in one of the numerous vents or possibly even in some hidden
crawlspace underneath the very floor I stood on.. The endlessness of the place made me want to throw
myself against one of the walls and kill myself. Just as the prospect of doing so crossed my mind, one of the
rooms that I entered however, had a very neat cubicle inside it, sitting neatly, adjacent to its entrance. The
lone article adorning the work desk however, was an archaic Windows 95 PC, straight out of the nineties. At
first I thought it was a sort of trap, which would lure me into a Jeff the Killer jumpscare or a hidden trapdoor
underneath the rotating mesh support chair or probably something even worse... But eventually curiosity
got the better of me, and since I had nothing better to do, I decided to enter the cubicle and start the PC.
After what seemed like an eternity, the computer staggered to life along with the nostalgic sound of the CPU
fan whirring. After the familiar start screen, I was simply greeted by a solitary video file on the iconic default
desktop background (the one with the rolling meadows). It was titled "CoRpUsChRiStAs.avi". At this point it
was more likely than not, that it was just a jump-scare, but I decided to open it against my better judgement
for I had nothing to lose. Once again, the file took its own sweet time to open and during the excruciatingly
long wait, I noticed, from the corner of my left eye, a lanky silhouette dash across a distant corridor...

5. I knew that if the video made even a single noise, I would essentially give up my location to whoever or whatever
was lurking in the distance, and that I would be dead meat in no time. So I minimized the volume, in the nick of
time. My heart popped into my mouth momentarily as the media file started playing. I saw the black Cross of
the Antichrist on the screen. By the time the media file still had 3 seconds left, I was yet again anticipating a
jump-scare, but instead, the cross turned right. I took that as an indication for me to move towards the right. I
should have known better than to trust the video, but I didn't have much of a choice at that time either. Almost
simultaneously, I saw the same shadowy figure from earlier, scurrying once again, only this time, the thing was
much closer than earlier. I gasped momentarily as beads of cold sweat now formed on my face.. Before I knew
it, my legs were carrying me as fast as I could through the office spaces. I could hear the thumping of the
creature get increasingly louder with each passing moment. They were unrelenting... I knew it was onto me..
Just then, by some miracle, I saw a ladder appear out of thin air.. A solitary, ludicrous maintenance ladder, in
the middle of nowhere. It led to a ventilation pipe which ran along the ceiling. I had not the slightest idea of the
potential hazards that were to follow if I were to choose to climb the ladder and crawl into the pipe, but those
seemed like a relatively more welcoming prospect than being devoured alive by this 10 foot monster. Without a
moment's delay or hesitation, I climbed the ladder with my trembling legs and crawled into the vent, just in
time. As I slammed the pipe’s opening shut and took a moment to catch my breath & to regain my composure, I
could hear whatever it was that was chasing me, groan, grunt and fume in a manner that resembled no Earthly
beast. The footsteps finally stopped, but the noises the creature made, sent a chill down my spine. As I
continued wriggling my way through the pipe and into the unknown, I didn't even dare to imagine the fate I
would have met at the hands of that beast, had I been unsuccessful at escaping it by the skin of my teeth...

6. To Be Continued...