CHAPTER FROM MY ORIGINAL NOVEL, POSTED STRICTLY FOR FEEDBACK PURPOSE.

  ____

  The st thing I remembered was the wind trying to rip my helmet off and that final, sickening lurch as my bike decided it was done with this whole "staying upright" thing.

  Brake failure. Fucking fantastic.

  Too much speed on a turn I'd taken a hundred times. The guardrail stopped being a safety feature and started looking like a giant metal cheese grater aimed right at me.

  Then—the main event. A crunch that I felt in my teeth, a snap that definitely wasn't the bike, and the world deciding to spin like a drunk top. Pavement, sky, pavement, sky. It was less flying and more being thrown in a garbage disposal.

  For one very clear, very pissed-off second, I thought, Well, this is a stupid way to die.

  And then—

  —I woke up.

  Gasping like a fish in a bucket. My sheets were trying to strangle my legs. My heart was doing a drum solo against my ribs. The whole "dying" thing had felt… convincing. I could still feel the ghost of the impact buzzing in my bones.

  What the absolute fuck was that?

  I sat up. My room. Same shitty blinds, same pile of clothes on the chair that was probably achieving sentience. I patted myself down. No leaks. No new bones poking out. Just me, Isaac, in one piece and sweating like a sinner in church.

  Okay. A dream. A really, really high-definition dream. My brain's special effects department had really outdone itself.

  But the details were sticky. The smell of burning rubber. The specific, gritty taste of asphalt. That's not normal dream stuff. That's your brain being an overachieving asshole.

  Logic time. If that had been real, I wouldn't be in my bed. I'd be a stain on the highway or a vegetable on a gurney. Therefore, it wasn't real. It was a stress dream. Too much caffeine, not enough sleep, and a subconscious that's apparently convinced I have a death wish. Case closed.

  I got out of bed, my body feeling weirdly stiff, like I'd actually taken a beating. I nearly ate shit tripping over my own boot. Cssic. I shuffled out to the kitchen, my brain already screaming for coffee.

  On the way, I passed the table. The pizza box from st night was still there, open, with one sad, fossilized crust inside.

  I stopped.

  I could have sworn I threw that out. I distinctly remembered taking the trash down yesterday because it was trash day. Didn't I? Maybe I just remembered meaning to do it. My memory felt fuzzy, like a TV with bad reception. I shrugged it off. You forget stuff. It happens. Not everything is a sign of the apocalypse.

  Coffee first. Piss second.

  I detoured to the bathroom. The light flickered on, humming that annoying fluorescent hum. I looked in the mirror. I looked like hell warmed over. Pale, bags under my eyes, hair doing its best impression of a bomb site.

  "Just a dream, you idiot," I told my reflection. My voice was rough. I spshed water on my face, reached for the towel.

  When I looked back, the mirror was fogged from my breath.

  Right in the middle of the fog was a single, perfect bck dot.

  I blinked. It was still there.

  Weird. I wiped my hand across the gss. The fog smeared, but the dot didn't move. I wiped again, harder. Nothing. I tried to scratch it off with my fingernail. It was like trying to scratch a hole in the air. The dot was just… part of the mirror now.

  A little prickle of "oh, this is new" ran down my spine.

  Then the dot started to grow.

  It wasn't spreading like a stain. It was unfolding, branching out in these inky, vein-like tendrils, swallowing my reflection from the center out. It was completely silent. My sink disappeared. Then my shoulders. The st thing to go were my own eyes, staring back at me from two little isnds of clear gss before they winked out too.

  The mirror was now a rectangle of pure, depthless bck. It wasn't dark; it was a nothing.

  Then a drop of that same nothingness welled up at the bottom of the mirror.

  It fell.

  Spt.

  It hit the tiles with a thick, wet sound and spread, a bck oil slick that erased the pattern of the tiles where it touched. Another drop fell. And another.

  "Okay, nope. We are done. Check, please."

  I spun and grabbed the doorknob. It didn't turn.

  It was locked.

  "What the fuck?" I muttered, jiggling it. It was a simple push-button lock on the inside. I was on the inside. It should be open. I rattled the knob, then threw my shoulder against the door. It felt like hitting a solid wall.

  Behind me, the dripping sound was getting faster. I didn't want to look. I could feel the air getting colder, as if even the heat had noped out of there faster than I could.

  I kicked the door. "Open, you piece of shit!"

  Something cracked. I looked back.

  The bck goo seeping across the floor had covered what used to be the washbasin and bathtub, but now they were just… gone. Not broken. Erased, leaving a featureless bckness in their wake.

  Then the lights went out. Not because they were off or the bulb got smashed, but because they were also eaten away by the encroaching darkness. And it was the kind of dark you could feel on your skin, heavy and cold.

  So this is it, I thought. This is how I go. Not in a cool bike crash, but eaten by a sentient bathroom.

  I closed my eyes, preparing for the inevitable, not that opening and closing meant much in the absolute darkness around me.

  A minute passed, or perhaps a dozen seconds. It's not like I was counting. I opened my eyes, prepared to meet and greet some incomprehensible horror that would make my mind go insane before eating me piece by piece like a sashimi ptter.

  But what greeted me were words. Glowing white text, yet not illuminating a single shred of my body, floating in the void.

  [ Initialize? ]

  [ Yes / Yes ]

  I stared at it. "Are you fucking kidding me? What kind of choice is that?"

  The void did not answer. Very professional.

  Is this the real life? Or is this just fantasy?

  Caught in a bckslide, no escape from reality...

  My brain, helpful as ever, was providing the soundtrack to my meltdown.

  I ran through the possibilities, because what the hell else was I supposed to do?

  First, and most likely: I'm having a psychotic break. This seems probable. In which case, cooperating with the demonic text might be part of the healing process. Or it might get me a one-way ticket to the soft room with the padded walls.

  Second, this is real. Which is so much worse. If it's real, then I'm trapped in my bathroom by a malevolent UI, and my only options are 'Yes' or 'Yes'. Did this UI take some bullshit community college course on the illusion of choice?

  Or the best one: I'm still asleep. This is a lucid nightmare within a nightmare. Inception-level bullshit. At some point, a spinning top will appear and I'll have to kick it.

  I decided to wait it out. Maybe if I ignored it, it would get bored. I sat down on the cold tile—or at least what used to be one, now it was just a pin bck surface—and put my back against the repcement of the stubborn door. I counted to a hundred. Then two hundred. The words just hung there, patient and mocking.

  After a while, a new problem emerged. A pressing, urgent, biological problem.

  I had to piss. Like, really bad.

  Of all the ways to break a standoff with a cosmic horror entity, a full bdder was not the one I expected. Was this a trick? A low-blow tactic to make me panic and choose? I crossed my legs, trying to think dry thoughts. Deserts. Blow-dryers. That scene from Lawrence of Arabia.

  It didn't work. Another ten minutes passed, or maybe it was an hour. Time was a soup. The words didn't change. My bdder's demands did not cease. They intensified. This was becoming a battle of wills I was destined to lose.

  "Fine! Fine, you win!" I shouted at the void. "But this is the shittiest game show ever!"

  I pushed myself up and approached the two glowing [ Yes ] options. They looked identical. But in a universe where my bathroom was currently a bck hole, who was to say they were the same? Maybe one meant "Yes, initialize my existence" and the other meant "Yes, please flush my soul into the digital toilet."

  I pointed a finger at them.

  "Eenie, meenie, miney... fuck it."

  I tapped the one on the left.

  For a second, nothing. Then, the void rippled. The darkness didn't so much vanish as get repced by the normal bathroom light so fast it made my eyes water. I was standing in my bathroom. The door was open. The mirror was just a mirror. The tile was tile.

  I let out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding. "Thank Christ."

  I took a step toward the hall, ready to put this whole nightmare behind me and finally, finally take the leak of a lifetime.

  Then I froze.

  The mirror. It went bck again. Instantly. No warning.

  And new text appeared, crisp and white.

  [ SYSTEM REBOOTING... ]

  A progress bar popped up underneath it. 0%.

  "Are you for real?" I whispered.

  The bar began to fill. 1%... 5%... 12%...

  I just stood there, watching, my need to piss now a distant, secondary concern to the fact that my reality was apparently installing a fucking service pack.

  It hit 100%. The bar vanished.

  [ WELCOME BACK, PLAYER ]

  I didn't move. A pyer. In what?

  Driven by a mixture of terror and a "well, we're already this far down the rabbit hole" resignation, I reached out and poked the mirror.

  The text changed.

  [ Pyer Status | Index | ??? | ??? ]

  I tapped [ Pyer Status ].

  [ PLAYER STATUS ][ Name: Isaac Theodore ][ Status: Alive, Severely Needs to Piss, Regretting Life Choices ][ Buffs: None ][ De-buffs: Impending Bdder Failure ]

  It knew. Of course it knew.

  I tapped [ Index ].

  [ ERROR 404: DATA NOT FOUND ]

  "Helpful."

  The other two options just gave the same error.

  I stared at my reflection in the now-normal-seeming mirror. Then I gave it the finger. It didn't react.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out.

  [ System Update Complete ]

  The screen went bck.

  [ Welcome To The Game, Pyer #1256911]

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  ? [2025] [Abstracto]. All rights reserved.This is an original work by the author. Please do not reproduce, repost, or use without permission.