As my Dad always used to say, “Growing up is like a trip to IKEA; You go in with expectations about what you want, but somewhere along the way you get completely lost, and eventually you come out with a bunch of stuff you never thought you needed.”
He thought it was hilarious, the rest of us, not so much.
But, considering my current predicament, I can’t help but laugh at the hellish irony.
I just finished getting a degree, and with some insane stroke of luck, I managed to get a decent job with a decent salary. Finally I could purchase my own apartment. Nothing impressive, but enough for a bachelor, willing to live at the outskirts of town, buying budget furniture from IKEA.
To me, it was a symbolic gesture. Finally getting and putting together my own stuff, to have the ability to pay for it despite having a significantly large student loan.
As I’m sure we all know, IKEA is more of a labyrinth than a store, constantly evolving as if it’s a living creature rather than a company. So, to see new sections pop up here and there shouldn’t have been a big deal. The new section read:
“Not sure who you are? Let us help you!”
It was a new branch to the complex maze. I figured there wouldn’t be any harm in checking it out, and at a first glance, it was exactly what I had been looking for.
The room looked like the spitting image of my college dorm room, with ancient looking furniture and the cheapest piece of shit television one could find. There were no price tags, but considering how it looked, it had to be cheap. The desk and chair would go perfectly in my new study.
As I turned around to look for any staff to assist me, I noticed the open space I had entered through had been replaced by a door.
It was locked.
I hammered on it for a while, yelling for someone to let me out, that I had been mistakenly locked in, but to no avail. As if that wasn’t annoying enough, I’d mistakenly left my phone at home. Defeated, I plumped down on the bed, it was grimy.
It had looked clean enough when I entered, but it was clearly heavily worn. I thought they’d gone a bit far with a the realism, using a used mattress, but it probably wasn’t a part of their inventory, rather some sort of pathetic break room.
I waited for someone to notice their mistake, after an hour I decided to break down the door. A futile attempt that resulted in more pain for me than the door.
As I lay in the bed, I reminisced back to my college days. I hadn’t really enjoyed it much, spending more time studying than socialising, and though I’m glad it worked out for me in the end, there aren’t many fond memories that remain.
After three hours I heard the door click.
“Fucking, finally,” I thought to myself as the door slid open.
It was dark on the other side. Had the store already closed for the day? I peeked outside, and whoever opened the door had seemingly vanished.
Annoyed, and just ever so slightly nervous, I stepped into the darkness. My eyes quickly adjusted to reveal that I hadn’t returned to the store, but I was in what looked like a home theatre with a couch and numerous computer monitors facing it.
The door I just emerged through had disappeared, and there were no other exits.
One by one, the monitors turned on, followed by several of them glitching up momentarily, displaying distorted images and emitting a horrible screeching sound.
It only took me a moment to recognise the glitched up pictures. They were from my childhood and early teenage years.
I stared for a moment while all the screens settled, then they starting to play home videos, showing each and every aspect of my life.
Mesmerised and equally horrified, I kept staring at the screens. The logical part of my brain tried to explain it all as an elaborate, distasteful prank; It wasn’t exactly the first time people had pulled off that kind of shit.
The videos started off oddly pleasant, showing things like my third birthday party, building legos with my older brother my first kiss.
Then it started getting darker…
Everything so far had been events I personally remembered, but as the videos replayed over again, the focus went behind what I experienced. They showed the affair my dad had when I was three, that I had only experienced my first kiss as a part of a dare, and that my brother hated me.
Both fear, and rage bubbled in my veins, I took a chair and started to smash each monitor, shoving everything to the ground. For each screen I broke, the audio just got louder. The speakers wouldn’t stop screaming at me, telling me that I would die alone, that no one had ever truly given a shit about me.
Before I could escape my adrenaline fuelled rage, everything fell silent around me. The remaining monitors shut off, leaving me in utter silence.
After a couple a minutes to cool off, a light lit up on the wall, revealing another door with a sign above.
“Furniture made just of you!” It read.
I looked at the door, praying that the sign was a typo, and that they meant to write ‘for.’
Before I could think about it any further, something jolted me into the next room, shoving me to the floor in the process.
“Who the fuck is doing this?” I yelled, hoping the culprits would reveal themselves.
I shot to me feet and tried to reorient myself. The room was too dark to see, but the atmosphere had completely changed. The air felt heavy, and the floor beneath me was moist, producing a sickly squish as I moved around.
My clothes were covered in some thick, viscous liquid where I had fallen to the ground, it smelled metallic.
In a panic, I fumbled around for a source of light, but before I could find anything, the room automatically lit up from a dim, central lightbulb, hanging from a chain.
What I saw made me want to gouge my eyes out.
The entire room was covered in flesh, the walls and floor made of muscle, blood seeping out wherever I put my feet. It was alive, pulsating, twitching in response to my movement.
Across the room, there were pieces of furniture scattered; Chairs made of bone with pieces of flesh still attached, and cushions made from viscera. I hadn’t even noticed the stench, but now that I knew where it came from, it became unbearable. Tables with human hands for legs, and paintings with ribs for frames.
The paintings themselves where hundreds of faces ripped off their owners and crudely mashed into a frame in some sick display of art. I could recognise each face as a friend or family, everyone I had ever known ripped to shreds.
I desperately tried to escape, even going as far as attempting to scratch myself through the meat walls, tearing my nails off in the process. Blood squirted everywhere, but I couldn’t tell if it came from myself or from the room itself.
“Help me.” I heard someone say.
The voice came from one of the paintings. A face had started to talk, its expression contorted into one of excruciating agony. It belonged to my brother.
“Help me,” he begged once more.
“What am I supposed to do?”
The other faces chimed in, pleading for me to help them, bodiless beings just hanging on the wall. They couldn’t be real.
A hint of sanity brought me back to reality. This wasn’t possible, they couldn’t be real. I grabbed one of the bone-chairs and smashed the paintings, the screams terrified me to my very core.
It only took one hit per painting to shatter the remnant of my loved ones to pieces.
Through the holes I had just created in the wall, a new room revealed itself.
I didn’t hesitate to step inside, anything would be better than the current horrors. To my pleasant surprise, it was almost normal, no larger than a wardrobe, but with enough space for a chair and a desk.
A computer with a blinking light stood patiently on the desk. I wiggled the mouse around to revive it. I prayed that it still be connected to the internet, so that I find help.
The glorious little Wi-Fi connection symbol shined bright in the bottom corner.
I opened the standard browser available, only to be met with a pop-up message.
Submitted April 01, 2019 at 05:36PM by RichardSaxon https://ift.tt/2OG2ZfV
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