A sharp pain hits your skull, relinquishing you from the numb darkness of your dreams. Eyes flying open, you instantly know that this isn’t right. You were on your couch just a minute ago, too tired to take off your VR headset, and now? Now you’re in a strange room, with a royal carpet beneath you reading to massive doors right in front of you. 

Your headache slowly fades off into confusion as you slowly get up. Walking to the doors, you peek your head out. A hallway decorated with columns and carpet obviously leading somewhere. Seeing no one else, you leave the room, following the path. Dread slowly creeps up your chest. What if this is a trap? What is even happening? Were you kidnapped? Your thoughts spinned until you constructed several scenarios, each one more elaborate than the last. 

Your legs carried you to another door, smaller but still grand. The wood felt cool on your palm as you pushed it open, heel hitting the edge of the marble floor. An endless black void stretched underneath you, and as your eyes drifted up, you saw floating pieces of marble draped with that same red carpet scattered across the void. At the end of the stretch was another door, a ledge with a ripped red carpet signaling the obvious. You were supposed to traverse this death trap.

Who were you kidding, there is absolutely no way you were going to do this. Backing away, you turn behind you, only to be met with nothing. The entire hallway was just gone. This isn’t real. It can’t be. Entire hallways don’t just vanish?! This can’t be real, so it must be a dream. A really, really lucid dream. And if it was a dream, you could wait it out! Sitting down in the entranceway, you decide to simply will all of this to stop. 

You shut your eyes, willing everything to stop with all your might. That is, until you feel significantly less floor supporting your weight. Your eyes fly open as you scramble up, only just avoiding the ground crumbling under your weight. The floor was disappearing, slowly closing in on your small ledge. Whether this is a dream or not, you did not want to die. Spinning towards the floating marble platforms, you brace yourself a before getting a running start.

You leap towards the first platform, chest tight with fear as wind rushes past your head. Soon you land safely a couple inches from the edge, stumbling forward before you gain your balance. Looking back, you see that the doorway behind you is completely gone. 

Welp, there was only one way to go.

You take a breath, close your eyes, and steady yourself, trying to chase off the creeping vines of anxiety that crawl up your chest. Opening your eyes again, you tense your muscles and jump again, the sound of your shoes against the marble a relief you never knew you needed. Before you give yourself the chance to freeze, you take off again, bouncing to each platform with the grace of an infant. Finally you take one last leap- straight into a grand column 

Stumbling back, you grip the edge of the insignia on the beam, keeping yourself from tumbling down into the darkness below. Despite everything, you’re alive. Exhausted, but alive. 

After a small break, you walked through the wooden doors, entering a dark hallway. Cautiously, you traverse the hall, one step at a time. Some sort of goop drips down from the ceiling like water in a damp cave. A drop lands on your cheek, sticking slightly before you wipe it off. 

Continuing forward, you approach a normal sized door for once, though the fact it’s pitch black is suspicious at best. You don’t see a knob for the door, so you place your palm against it. Your hand presses into the darkness of the door, which gives way as the black slime coats your hand. Yanking it back quickly, you look at your palm in disgust as globs of black goop drip down onto the floor.

You do not want to open this door, but the lack of options guides your hand back to the door. Pushing the door open, you tread cautiously into the room. It is pitch black, save for a single dim lamp hanging overhead, casting a faint golden glow over the room. 

Behind you, the door swings shut. 

Panicking, you turn around and frantically bang on the door, bashing your fists, and eventually your shoulder, against it in a vain attempt to escape. Through this, you fail to notice the goop slowly congeal, clumping together into a singular mass. Two purple eyes bulge out from the slime along with a wide grin to loosely craft a face, along with a small tendril inching towards your hysterical form.

 You feel something curl around your waist before forcefully spinning you to face it. A giant mass of purple slime towers over you, grinning madly at your misfortune. 

You scream for help, for anyone to save you, but it seems the only one who heard your cries had no mercy in its heart for you.

Two arms protrude out of the mass, causing you to back up against the door. You watch as the goop forms into hands, fingers spreading out experimentally as it tests its new appendages out. You look to each side of the beast, but with how big it was, you knew it was useless to run. That didn’t stop you from trying.

You turn and bolt to your right, but you don’t make it even three steps before a massive hand grabs your torso roughly, lifting you off your feet. You thrash wildly in the air, pushing against the slime with all your might, but it doesn’t budge. The slime, previously squishy, has hardened enough to firmly hold you. A thumb makes its way up to your mouth, silencing your next scream. 

You’re lifted higher and higher to meet the monster face to face, tears silently streaming down your face as the reality of the situation crashed into you. You were going to die here, in a strange world separated from all you knew, with no chance to say goodbye.

The giant slime opened its maw, revealing a tongue triple your size. It lunged forward, slamming into your body and drenching you in its spit, which was just stickier slime. It trailed up, invading every part of you, before departing as quickly as it came. Satisfied with its taste test, the beast decided to finally feast on its prey.

Shifting its grip on you, you’re left dangling between two fingers as it raises you above its mouth. You look down at the cavern below, dark and warm, before you feel the pressure of the hand holding you vanish. 

You drop into the maw, hitting the tongue like a rock. You feel the slime beneath you give way slightly, like a muscle, as it squirms and moves under you. You’re able to turn around just in time to see the newly formed teeth snap shut, leaving you in total darkness. The tongue moves up, slamming you into the roof of the mouth, grinding you against it, before sliding you down to the sides of the maw, smushing you into the goop of the mouth. 

It continues like this for a while, with it tossing you around and toying with you, like it was trying yo savor a hard candy. Unfortunately, all candies run out of flavor eventually. The tongue raises you upwards, shifting you to the back of the mouth. You spot the throat, a gaping hole that leads to certain death, but you don’t fight it. You’re guided back, back to the throat, and you feel the slime around you constrict violently as a deafening gulp resonates all around you