Squirrel98

Backrooms: The Thing that Breathes

Amanda Lewis
@Estylwen@Lexisheeps

---

The music surprised Amanda, but what surprised her even more was the sudden fall into a deep and seemingly endless darkness. Her body was shaking the whole way down. Once she opened her eyes again, she noticed that in front of her was a pool. The physics didn't make sense to her, but she had seen weirder stuff inside this building, so this wasn't so shocking anymore. Her knees bended and her hand slowly went inside the water. Seeing a pool so close made her remember her uncle. This was probably just water, not alcohol or something, so this shouldn't have reminded her of him, but it did. Her body started shaking again as tears rolled down her cheeks. Come on, Amanda. Be strong. Be strong for Nigel. He is waiting for you somewhere. He needs you.

After the image of her son showed up inside her head, she was quickly able to forget all the bad memories. She could focus on the task in front of her again. There were two exits from this place: one at the top of the stairs and one at the bottom. Should she simply pick randomly? Then she started focusing on the radio. Wait? Was that a warning? A warning as to what would happen if she picked the wrong place? So she shouldn't pick randomly then? Her decision should be based on something, but on what? There seemed to be no hint or clue as to what decision was the right one. Maybe she was thinking too hard. Maybe she was reading too much into what the radio host was saying.

The water in the pool made her think of what happened in the first room. The room was filling itself with water. After that, she chose the door downstairs and that lead her into the office room. Underneath the office room was this pool. Does that mean that going up would lead her back into the cafetaria? Back towards the unicorn that once tried to poison her? Maybe she should go downstairs again then. Or was there still something to do inside this room? Would the water be drinkable? Or was it regular pool water? No, she should focus on getting to that door downstairs.

The Breaking of the Seals

Jasper was curious to see what the police officers were researching, so he took a closer look - clearly against Kalan's wishes. They were close to a coffee shop that suddenly decided to close during opening hours. So something happened out here? Jasper asked Kalan what he thought of it, but he already knew the answer he was going to get. This was the work of another demon. Even though this demon chose an even more hidden alley than he had done before, the demon's work was caught by the police. However, the demon itself seemed to have escaped. Was this the result of impulsiveness? Miscalculation? Or a bad choice for a victim? Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with Jasper and the longer he would stand there looking at the police officers, the more suspicious he would seem.

To his surprise, people were talking of the incident from even a further distance from the coffee shop. People talked fast and the incident had clearly left a big impression on everyone. However, people were more anxious in a very specific direction. Is that were the other demon has gone? Should he follow them? Kalan said that it wasn't a smart idea, but his thirst for blood convinced him to follow the trace anyways. Jasper decided the listen to Kalan as usual. It took some time for them to find it, but in the end they noticed that the trace ended at a door. They were clearly already fighting before they even made it inside. It wouldn't be easy to get inside without anyone noticing and they also had no idea of knowing what they would stumble upon once making it inside. However, they wanted to try. That's why they waited for the perfect moment to get inside the building. There, they noticed some stairs and on the bottom of them was a woman. They heard her mention that demons can't break deals. So this woman was the demon who made a scene at the coffee shop? That's interesting.

Backrooms: The Thing that Breathes

@Estylwen@Lexisheeps Are there stuffed animals in the new room too?
Is the water from the pool transparant as in that you can see to the bottom?
So there are the pools and next to them two staircases with an exit at the top of one and at the bottom of the other?

The Breaking of the Seals

@BunniesOfDoom If it's not too much trouble could you update the "Character Interactions and Plot developments" post with where everyone is?

Don't sin. Celeste is always watching.

5 September 2031. Aliens taking on a human form landed on the planet Earth. They came with great stories about the fantastic possibilities of their home planet. Promises were made about saving our planet from the toxic actions of humanity and making it equally phenomenal. Sadly, our people were naive enough to believe everything that was said to us by the aliens. For some reason, we thought that beings smart enough to find us from that far away and intelligent enough to take our form and understand our languages would have good intentions towards us. It really seemed as if that was the case. They were only here for a visit and to learn more about us, not to do anything to us. Our thinking was simply that stupidly innocent. We gave them a - what we thought to be temporary - home. A roof above their heads. More food and drinks than one can ever imagine being in one place. Enough blankets to never be cold again. Air conditioning to keep them cool if the heat was too much to bare. We served them as slaves in the hope that they would share even the tiniest bit of knowledge they had that we could not figure out on our own. They were superior. We knew that. That's why we treated them as the gods they seemed to be.

11 February 2035. Finally, the aliens were done planning their attack on us. By this time, even the people who were suspicious of them at first had accepted them into their hearts. They had behaved so well until then that they convinced literally every single one of us to trust them. Once in a while, people would wonder why they weren't returning to their home planet to report back, but they always turned out to have an excuse that did indeed sound plausible. However, now that their preparations were done, everything would change. Everything. For the first time since we met them, they would show us magical abilities. Even though their human bodies seemed to limit their magic to certain boundaries, they still looked like gods. We assumed that the human bodies weren't their real bodies and thus the temporary forms they took on to make us more comfortable - or that they needed to take on, because our eyes wouldn't be able to perceive their actual bodies - was limiting them. Because that was our believe, we hardly fought back. Some people died trying, but the majority of us simply didn't have the heart or the power to even attempt. Most of humanity was locked up in houses the aliens had transformed into jails that were unable to escape from if one didn't have magical powers. We thought our lives were over, that we were going to die there, that we were going to go extinct.

12 August 2035. Apparently, the aliens weren't the only creatures who found our planet to be a lovely vacation spot, possibly a second home. Another creature made their presence known: Celeste. No one knows who or what Celeste is, where she came from or why. No one had ever seen what she looks like. If she even is a she. The only thing we knew, was that she didn't like the aliens anymore than we did at that point. She considered this as a barbaric and foolish fight between two of the dumbest races to exist. Her voice would sound as if it was coming from everywhere. It sounded close by and at the same time very far away. Her voice wasn't particularly high, but it wasn't particularly low either. She sounded like a robot, but at the same time completely different from a robot. We couldn't place it. She was too different to be compared with anything or anyone we knew. She decided to stop time on the whole planet, but to keep our hearts beating. This way, both humans and aliens were locked inside their own bodies. She planned for this to go on for eternity.

28 December 2046. The aliens finally had gathered enough magical energy to stop the spell for exactly three people: two aliens and one human being were randomly picked to be unfrozen. They represented both of our races when talking to Celeste and begging her to give us a chance. A chance to prove ourselves to be worthy. After days of constant begging, she ultimately decided to give in to our desires. We were given a chance to win our freedom back. Seven people were picked to represent both of our races. Sadly, those seven people represented the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. Knowing that these people were our only shot at getting our freedom back was... well... disappointing to say the least. We had to prove to Celeste that we were smart and kind creatures who were above fighting and only thinking about ourselves. Picking the worst people out of all of us cannot be called an honest chance. Unfortunately, there was no way of arguing with Celeste. This was the only chance we would ever be given by her.

The selected seven people were locked inside one building. They were not allowed to go outside under any circumstances, not even in the beautiful garden surrounding the building. They were only able to watch it through the locked windows. Living inside the building seemed like their worst nightmare as they all received one single, personalized instruction to follow during their whole stay. Whenever they broke the rule, they were to be punished.

Lust was not allowed to physically go near the others. They weren't allowed to touch them or even breath the same air as them. Whenever they were in the same room as the others, they had to keep a distance as if we were still in some kind of pandemic. Even looking too long at the same person could be punished.

Gluttony was only allowed to eat once every three days, while only drinking two glasses of water each day. Every single day, they would feel dehydrated and as if they were dying from starvation.

Greed was only allowed to leave their bedrooms at 7am, 1pm and 9pm. Each time, they could only stay out for one whole hour. During their stay in their bedroom, others were allowed to come inside and leave, but no objects were allowed to be brought in. Only people and the clothes they were wearing could enter and leave. The bedroom was as boring as can be, having white walls, a wooden floor and only the basic necessities with no decorations whatsoever.

Sloth was allowed an hour of sleep for every whole day that they stayed awake. If they were awake for two days straight without sleeping or even a nap, they were allowed to sleep two whole hours. At the same time, they were forced to exercise at least one hour every day.

Wrath wasn't allowed to say or do anything negative. They could earn one swear word for each good deed that they did for someone else in the building. At the same time, their legs were paralyzed from 5pm until 11am. They were given a wheelchair that they could manually move themselves.

Envy wasn't allowed to express any sign of envy through their actions, words, facial expressions or even their thoughts. Every time they would appear to be jealous of - for example - someone's shiny hair, they would lose parts of their own hair.

Pride was made older by Celeste. Suddenly, they looked, felt and behaved like a traditional 80 years old person. They lost the looks they were so proud of and would physically often need help from others due to being in an older body.

The challenge started 1 January 2047 and would end on 1 January 2048. Can the humans and aliens overcome their flaws and convince Celeste to give everyone their freedom back?

Backrooms: The Thing that Breathes

I'm sorry about the short length. It didn't seem useful to me to add more to it, since I have to wait for something to happen now.

Backrooms: The Thing that Breathes

Amanda Lewis
@Estylwen@Lexisheeps

---

Amanda was surprised to see what the papers on the desk contained. It was information about her. Bills that weren't paid. But she always paid her bills. It seemed as if she hadn't been present for a whole year. Had it been that long since she entered this building? Since she got lost in here? Since she last saw her son? It couldn't have been that long. If it had been, then the chances of her actually finding her son would be close to... zero? She wasn't prepared to accept that hypothesis as the truth. She wasn't even ready to think about something like that. The moment she was trying to shake away that thought, she realised that someone was moving the paper underneath the worm. It was something Amanda had thought of, but didn't dare to actually do. She was quite happy to be in a room with someone courageous enough to go through with it. And it seemed to be a useful move as some kind of code was written on the paper. What did the code say? 891? 894? 8914? It must have had something to do with the phone booth, because she couldn't see anything else in the room that asked for a number. That's why Amanda entered the phone booth, picked up the phone and pressed the code 894. Hopefully she read the paper right. And hopefully something useful would appear.

The Breaking of the Seals

The woman whose life Kalan had just ended, was lying motionless on the ground right before Jasper's feet. For a minute he thought of doing something about the dead body, but he knew that it would be a pain and that his fingerprints were nowhere to be found. There was no reason to do something that tedious. That's why he left the alley with both his weapon and his clothes being even bloodier than they already were. He put the dagger back in the pocket against his neck and started walking down the street. However, only a couple of minutes later he was already stopped by two police officers. This was a case of bad luck. Apparently something had been going on close by and him being covered in red splatters was very suspicious. They wondered if he had anything to do with it. Luckily, he already had his excuse prepared. Kalan quickly gave the control over the body back to Jasper as he knew that Jasper was better at getting out of these kinds of situations without using violence. Even an impulsive guy like Kalan was smart enough to know that using violence in such a public place was a bad idea.

"Good morning, officers. It's a beautiful day to take a walk outside, isn't it?" The officers weren't amused with his attempt at small talk. They wanted him to get to the point and explain the splatters on his clothes. They didn't seem to notice the weapon on his back. That must mean that Jasper did a good job at hiding the pocket and the weapon inside it. You couldn't even see a bump if you didn't know about it. "Look, I am but a simple artist who tries to make a profession out of their hobby. The fresh air and the beautiful sights are a great inspiration for my work. I have to admit that I do not always think before I leave the house, which is how I end up outside with my work clothes on."

At the front of his shirt was also a pocket on the inside. In this pocket were a couple of pictures of his latest works. "I can be quite clumsy, that's how I end up with paint all over myself and I am not always in the mood to do laundry. Currently, I literally have no clothes without any kind of paint on them and as you can clearly see, red is my favorite color. You might even have heard of me. The name is Jasper Raven." The name did seem familiar to one of the two officers. He once bought his work as a present for his niece, so he trusted the explanation Jasper had given them. They apologized for bothering him and left. Kalan was happy about getting away with the blood all over the body, while Jasper couldn't help but think about how angry his parents would have been knowing that he became a professional artist. The imagined angry faces of his mother and father gave him joy. He started walking down the street, while trying to ignore Kalan who was already on the lookout for his next victim. Jasper wondered how many lives it would take for his hunger to satisfied? Jasper loved the adrenaline, but a break couldn't hurt once in a while. However, he knew that he was never going to refuse Kalan. That was simply not an option.

Backrooms: The Thing that Breathes

It's 11pm here. Posting tomorrow for sure.

The Breaking of the Seals

It's 11pm here. Posting tomorrow for sure.