This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Kira1006 on 2026-07-28 09:17:22+00:00.

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I do not know if anyone is reading this. I simply sent this message, hoping it might eventually get through. I am in a room without windows, underground, I think.

My name is Tobi, and until Friday evening, I was the most boring person in this city. On Friday, I worked the late shift until 10 p.m., and afterward, I planned to wind down with a frozen pizza.

I was home by 10:40 p.m. Everything was still normal.

At 11:04 p.m., my phone started screaming.

Anyone who has experienced it before knows what I mean. That wailing siren blasting from the phone speaker that makes you flinch. There was a red banner across the screen, and beneath it, it said:

OFFICIAL EMERGENCY ALERT. A curfew is now in effect throughout the city. Return to your home immediately. Close all doors and windows. Do not leave the building under any circumstances. Stay away from windows. Further information will follow.

That was all.

I read the alert three times. Something like that should tell you why, what you are supposed to be afraid of, so you know how to behave.

This time, it only said what we were supposed to do. Not why. And then there was that one sentence. Stay away from windows. If there is a gas leak, you keep the windows closed. But why would you need to stay away from them?

A door opened in the stairwell. I heard someone talking on the phone, loudly and irritably. Outside on the street, a car honked. Within minutes, people seemed to be losing their nerves. But that was nothing compared to what came next.

At 11:11 p.m., the internet went down. The landline stopped working too. That was when panic began to build inside me. I had no idea what any of it meant. I stepped out into the stairwell. Albert, my elderly neighbor, was standing there in a white T shirt and his underwear, talking to the woman from downstairs while trying to light a cigarette.

There is a small grocery store about two hundred meters from my front door. It would not even take me two minutes to get there, and since I did not know how long the curfew would last or why it had been imposed, I thought it might be a good idea to get enough food for the next few days. Normally, I would have stayed home, but the store was practically within reach, and after hesitating for a moment, I was already running down the stairs.

Mr. Wessel lives on the second floor. Lived. I think he was around eighty, and every evening at half past eleven, he took his dog outside because he said the street was empty then and the dog did not have to be afraid.

When I stepped through the entrance and went outside, I saw him. He was lying there, half on the curb, and there was something crouched over him. It had long limbs, and its back curved like that of an animal bending over something it was eating.

I do not remember how I made it back up the stairs. I tore open the door to my apartment, ran inside, and slammed it shut behind me. Then I realized it was not my apartment, but it was already too late.

I was standing in a strange yellow hallway. Behind me was the door I had come through. My door. I tore it open again, but the stairwell was gone too. There was another room beyond it now, covered in the same strange yellow wallpaper. I sat down on the carpet with my back against the wall and thought, this is it, I have finally lost my mind.

I pinched myself so hard that I have bruises now, but it did not help. I did not wake up. Somewhere deep in the hallway, beyond one of the corners, I heard a growl. It did not come any closer, but I forced myself back onto my feet, stepped into the yellow room, and closed the door behind me as quietly as possible. I had to get away. Fear made my legs tremble, every step felt uncertain, and even the sound of my own breathing seemed too loud.

I do not know how long I walked. That damned place was enough to drive anyone insane. Everything looked the same. It was a fucking maze.

My legs had started to hurt, and tears were gathering in my eyes. Slowly, I began to feel as though I were suffocating. The walls were pressing in around me, and I could not find a way out. I felt like a hamster trapped on a wheel. Was any of this even real? Had what I saw happening to my neighbor been real?

I turned a corner and stopped. The walls in this hallway were white. I hurried down the corridor. It smelled like a hospital. I turned another corner, and at the far end was a door, half open. It was open because someone had placed a fire extinguisher in front of it. It was lying across the threshold, deliberately blocking the door.

I carefully pushed the door open a little farther and stepped inside. The room beyond it was a small laboratory. A man was sitting against the wall beneath the sink. At first, I thought he was an anatomical model. He was wearing a white laboratory coat that had turned the color of tea, and it hung from his body as though he were nothing more than a clothes hanger.

He was completely dried out. His skin was brown and hard, stretched tightly across his cheekbones, and his lips had pulled back far enough to expose every one of his teeth. His hands rested peacefully in his lap.

The door was in the next room.

And calling it a door is an understatement. It was a wall made of steel. It stretched from the floor to the ceiling, was at least five meters wide, had a dull surface and a thin seam running down the center, with a card reader and a small red LED mounted beside it.

What the hell was this place?

But to make a long story short, it might have been my way out. I went back to the scientist. He had to have an access card. I actually found one, even though touching the body was unpleasant. It hung from a cord around his neck. It was white, with a black stripe and a small golden chip.

I returned to the door.

I held the card against the reader. The LED turned green. Something clicked behind the wall, and then the two halves slid apart.

I stepped through.

The wall closed behind me. This is the room I am sitting in now. It is enormous, perhaps as large as a school gymnasium. Cabinets containing equipment line the walls, and there is a structure standing in the center. It is a ring, about three meters tall, made from metal segments, and the inside is lined with something that looks like black glass.

There was a folder lying on a table beside the door.

I opened it, but I do not understand most of what is inside. I am writing down what I can read. Maybe one of you can make sense of it.

Most of it consists of tables. There are columns, many of them abbreviated. Level. Residual emission (mV/m). Duration of stay. Return.

Almost every entry in the Level column is either zero or one.

In the Return column, almost every row says: no.

Three rows say: yes. Beside two of them, someone added a handwritten note: (Condition: see Appendix C). Appendix C is not in the folder.

Then there are pages of text:

...the term "Backrooms" is to be avoided. The technically correct designation is Interphase...

And then, farther back, alone on a single page, there is the only thing I truly understood:

Class III does not respond to light. Class III has no functioning visual organs. Class III orients itself using acoustic and electromagnetic emissions.

Beside it, someone had written a note in pen along the margin, small and slanted, with two initials beneath it:

They follow the static.

Unfortunately, the folder is not much use to me right now.

There is exactly one other exit from this room. It is an ordinary gray steel door with a card reader and a small window at eye level. The kind made from safety glass with wire mesh inside.

I went over because I wanted to get out, but I knew I had to be careful, so I peered through the small window. There is a white corridor on the other side, and blood is smeared everywhere. And there are things out there. These creatures, I do not know how to describe them, but they look as though they crawled straight out of my worst nightmares.

The door I used to enter this room no longer works. I am trapped. I wrote this and pressed send. Maybe there will be a signal for a moment and the message will get through.

Help me.

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