Chapter 28: Twisted Visions of Yourself

The room I had found myself in at the bottom of the stairs was filled from roof to floor with mirrors. No matter where I looked, I could see myself. It was almost creepy, especially considering how this almost looked like a public bathroom. There was a bright flash of light and closed my eyes.

The floor itself looked like a clean white tile that almost reflected things, and the ceiling was a drop tile that didn’t reflect anything. There was only a single bright source of light in the center of the entire room. The strange part was that my shadow was going in directions that the light itself wasn’t pointed.

I had six shadows, only one of which should have been there. It was a surreal experience to see so many shadows around me. Thankfully, they didn’t look like they were going to attack me, but I was going to keep an eye on them just in case, as my shadows attacking me wouldn’t come as a surprise to me anymore.

I walked carefully through this first room as I wasn’t quite sure what the gimmick was yet, but I had learned to not let my guard down. My weapon was ready in my hand just in case the shadows did try to attack me.

While walking through the room, I could feel an unnatural urge to look into the mirrors that lined the walls. I could immediately tell that the floor was controlling my actions, but with there seeming to be no real harm to it, I didn’t resist as I was forced to turn my head to the right.

What greeted me was a grotesque monster that looked vaguely like me. In the reflection, I saw that I had grown extra limbs where the didn’t belong, misshapen and misplaced. There was an appendage of indescribable length that grew out from my neck.

The grimace of pain on my reflection’s face almost made me do the same. None of my reflection’s limbs moved correctly, the joints moving in directions that were inhuman. There were no sounds I could hear, but I knew what this would sound like; the cracking and snapping would be horrid.

I eventually managed to pull my gaze away for a second, only to be forced to look back a moment later. The reflection was normal. My actual, normal reflection was before me once again, as if what I had seen before was just a hallucination.

After I had seen my own reflection, the compulsion to look at the mirror faded. I was just confused more than anything. What was that even, whatever version of me was in that reflection, it looked to be in a lot of pain.

As I opened a door on the opposite side of the room, I had a strong feeling I knew what the gimmick of this floor was going to be. The next room looked nearly identical to the one I was currently in with the mirrors lining the complete height and length of every wall, except this time, there were urinals that confirmed these were public washrooms.

I once again had started to feel the compulsion to look in the mirror behind me, but I managed to resist it until I had made it to the other side of the room. Turning around to gaze at myself in the mirror, I saw a horrifying landscape of my own flesh.

My reflection was what I would look like if someone had stretched my skin over several trees. The limbs of each tree ended with hands that looked identical to mine, with some even sharing the same scar on the outside of my right hand.

The landscape almost seemed to move in an imaginary breeze. The ground the trees of my own flesh stood on was completely barren and desolate. With hundreds of copies of the trees, I managed to turn away as one tree turned to look at me.

I shuddered as I resisted the urge to look back. The feeling I got when I felt it look at me could only be described as pure disgust. I felt the urge to vomit, only held back by the distraction that is resisting the urge to look back at the mirror. I promptly failed to resist and looked back at a distant reflection of myself.

I quickly gathered myself and moved on to the next room. This floor was a strange one indeed. The mirrors seemed to have some sort of ability to show me unnatural reflections of myself. I was hesitant to look anywhere, as there was always something wrong to see.

So, to gather myself a little, I closed my eyes. I kept walking forwards, with the layout of the current room already in my head. However, when I stepped forwards, I heard multiple footsteps despite only moving a single foot.

The noise startled me so much that I opened my eyes to look. When I did, I saw that I now had an extra leg on each side that seemed to move in tandem with my original legs. The fact that I now felt the new legs so naturally, it was almost as if they had been there my whole life.

I blinked to clear my eyes, and they were gone. The sensation of an extra pair of legs also went with it. To say it was disjointed feeling was an understatement. The feeling could be described as horrifying with how natural the new legs had felt after I looked at them.

This floor was messing with me in unique ways that I couldn’t have predicted. The extra limbs, both in reality and in reflections, paired with the absurdity that the mirrors show on top of it all… it was just a lot for my brain to try and process.

I sat down on the ground and decided to close my eyes and rest. I was getting a little restless on this floor, and I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. The unnatural scenery shouldn’t have been anything new to me. Considering the true face of floor twenty-five, and the sea of rotting flesh on the previous floor, scenery that is horrifying shouldn’t bother me.

Was it the likeness to my own image that bothered me? That could be it, considering I was never used to seeing my own appearance. That was true even before I came to these floors. I never liked seeing myself in anything, not that I was ashamed of my appearance, I just didn’t want to see myself in any reflection.

After taking a few deep breaths I noticed that I could feel myself breathing twice. I kept my eyes closed, as the floor had probably just given me a second head or something. I was still going to relax though, and no amount of oddity would ruin that.

Then, as if to prove me wrong, I felt the oddest sensation. I was thinking twice. There was no delay or anything to it, but I could tell, I was having the same thoughts happen in a different spot at the same time. It was surreal.

I opened my eyes so I could blink immediately, and the sensation disappeared. It seemed that the illusion of a second head was more than just a simple illusion. I should have been able to guess that after I had gained the two extra legs, but I guess I’m not as smart as I’d like to think.

This floor punished me for looking at mirrors and punished me for not looking at them too. It was a bit unfair if you asked me. Most floors seemed to have some way to work with or around the gimmick, I seemed to be stuck with this one and the mental consequences of that. I just needed to get on with it, and for lack of a better phrase, ‘man up’.

I fully opened my eyes after my small break and just started walking through the rooms. There was something truly surreal about seeing yourself twisted and morphed into strange shapes or being given additional body parts.

The more I went through this floor, the more dreamlike it felt with the abominations that the mirrors were beginning to show me. The room I was currently in was showing me a reflection of myself, almost perfectly normal, but my eyes had been replaced with painted rocks.

When I moved my eyes, the rocks that had replaced my eyes also moved, and my reflection screamed as it started to bleed out of the eye sockets. The rocks that had been painted white had quickly become stained red as it presumably shredded the inside of the reflection’s eye sockets.

I just watched blankly as the reflection of me screamed in agony. I didn’t seem to be bothered by the sight of myself suffering. I was starting to think it might be another effect from the floor itself, when I realized that it most likely wasn’t.

There is no way the floor would actively blunt my emotions here when not a single other floor did that. Manipulate my emotions, easily, but to go so far to make me not affected by the sight of myself suffering, it would normally try and amplify that effect.

I shook my head as I walked into the next room, ready to see the next illusion. I wasn’t scared, but there was this weird feeling of dissociation despite these being reflections of me. I wasn’t upset by the blood or disfigurement. I had seen so much blood and rotted flesh by this point, my brain almost registered it as normal.

The reflections in this room all stared at me, even if I wasn’t looking directly at the mirror. Their eyes followed me as I walked calmly through the room. I felt their eyes on me as I looked around the room, forced to see each and every one of them before the floor would let me move on.

What I didn’t expect was that they would start to mutilate themselves in various horrifying ways. Now, I had said I was becoming apathetic to witnessing horrific acts, but that only goes so far when you watch what you assumed to be a reflection break their own legs and twist them off.

The display was barbaric, and horrific just for the sake of being horrific. I watched as they did horrific things to themselves with my likeness. I was genuinely horrified as my eyes panned from reflection to reflection. The acts became more and more senseless.

Soon, they started to kill themselves painfully, in grotesque ways, always while screaming. Some cried while mouthing the words ‘I don’t want to die’. The reflections were forced to do this while I was forced to watch. Death after death, mutilation one after another.

I forced myself to walk away. It took every ounce of willpower I had to keep walking. I kept telling myself that it was all an illusion. The reflections aren’t real. They can’t be. I’m right here. When I looked down at me legs in the next room, they were broken.

The femur split in several places, bone sticking out of my skin. The pain was immense as I closed my eyes screaming. Opening my eyes, the next moment, the pain was gone, but the cold sweat was evident.

The illusion of pain was real. My brain had registered both of my legs being broken, and the pain along with that. It wasn’t real.

This isn’t real.

But it was.

I accepted it.

This was as real as I was going to get down here. I could dismiss this as much as I wanted, but I was going to have to start accepting all of this as reality now. I won’t survive more than this if I let these things cripple me with fear and anxiety.

I calmed myself while breathing deeply. My quickly beating heart was also beginning to calm down. The reflections in the room twisted and morphed all around me as I was forced to look at them. Extra limbs, replaced parts, missing parts. I watched it all as I was calming myself.

This is just something that has to happen. Why does it have to happen to me, I’ll never know, but what I do know is that I’m here and have to keep going. I have to keep going with everything that I have.

After steeling my mind and heart, I kept going through the floor. This floor was messing with me in ways that I didn’t even know was possible. My thoughts were erratic and all over the place, but in the back of my mind, I was aware something was off.

One second, I was the paragon of peace and tranquility as I watched deranged reflections of myself do horrific things to themselves. The next, I would be on the verge of tears and throwing up from the shock of it all.

Something more than the mirrors was wrong on this floor. While I thought this, a wave of compulsion to look around forces me to the ground as I trip over my own feet. I tried to step on a third leg that wasn’t there, having felt something that wasn’t actually there.

I managed to calm myself eventually. When I finally noticed it, the control effect that was so subtle, I had no idea it was there until just then. It was trying to force me to stay calm. Why… why was the floor actively trying to calm me down when the best way to kill me here would be to make me panic and do something I couldn’t recover from.

I didn’t get it. The motivation behind this floor was beyond me. I would have to push through one way or another, and somehow shake off the control effect, but also doing exactly what it wanted. I could try and abuse the control and just let it do what it wanted, but who’s to say it wouldn’t control me after this floor… after I escaped the floors.

I couldn’t let it control me, even if it was the easiest option. I would calm myself down when the panic gets too much. The floor effect was a crutch that I couldn’t rely on if I wanted to actually make it through the floor successfully.

With my mind running at a mile a minute, I went through the next door. The next room was the same as all the others, but there was writing on the glass. The writing looked old, the material used to write it was a dark brown, flaking off the mirror in parts.

‘Open your eyes’

It was just three words, but something felt weird. Of course, my eyes were already open though. I walked onto this floor… and closed them because of the bright light… when did I open them again.

I don’t remember opening them again.

Then the feeling of the control effect hit me. A different one. Another layer.

I finally opened my eyes to see the floor beneath my face. I was laying on the ground. Behind me was the stairwell I had come down when I started the floor. I had never even left he first room.

I rubbed my eyes, somehow feeling oddly well rested. Was it just a nightmare, or was it the floor effect? There was no way to truly know, but I had no choice but to open the door on the other side of the room and see for myself what was truly going on here.

There was no compulsion to look in the mirrors, there was no twisting and morphing of body parts. It was just me, a normal reflection on every wall, repeating to infinity as the mirrors reflected off each other.

The single light in the room only casting a single shadow that appeared normal. Everything looked to be normal. There wasn’t a single oddity other than every wall being covered in mirrors. When I reached the door and opened it. It was the same second room, but instead of another door on the other side that would lead to a third room, I saw a green exit sign and a door with an eye symbol painted on it.

It was the end of the floor.

I quickly walked to the door and entered the stairwell. Instead of immediately heading down to the next floor, I sat at the top and contemplated this floor for a bit longer. I wanted to understand everything that happened.

The start of the floor used one control effect to make me close my eyes. Then, with no prompt, I continued to see the world around me as if nothing had changed after the bright light. In fact, I had immediately forgotten the bright light.

This floor was starting to layer control effects and illusions. Floor twenty-five also did this… but this was on a whole other level. What was that writing on the glass. It was clearly dried blood. Who or what wrote that though?

Was it something in my brain recognizing that something was wrong? What would have happened if I never saw that message on the glass though. Would I have starved to death while trapped in an illusion of absolute horror?

I was stressed. There was almost no warning, and I was trapped in the floor’s illusion. It wasn’t powerful in the same way that floor eleven was, but with how many layers there were to lull me in. It was impossible to escape even when I noticed one. I had to notice all of them and then read the writing on the walls, literally.

I finally let myself relax. I was out of the floor, it could no longer trap me, and I had won. Even if I fell for the illusion again, it would be harder to hold me in because I knew about it and could be ready for it.

Then my eyes opened again, and I was still on the floor, back in the first room with mirrors from roof to floor.

What?

I was in the stairwell, and was about to leave the floor… or was I? Had I really escaped, even this time I might be under the illusion from the floor. What if… there wasn’t any mirrors to begin with, from the very beginning, I was in an illusion.

I closed my eyes and focused. Was there something I was missing? There had to be something not quite right about all of this. I opened my eyes, only to see the same room, with not a single difference.

There was no way that this was the right room though, no matter how much I wanted to just try leaving the floor, there was no way it would actually be the exit. I would be trapped here until I figured something out.

This looked exactly like reality to me. Everything around me looked and felt real, unlike the slight haze that covered my vision on floor twenty-two. I just needed to take a step back and evaluate the situation here.

Then I took a physical step back and saw all new scenery.

It was a dark room with a flicker lamp sitting on a side table. Behind me was a stairwell that led up and on the other side of the room was the exit of the floor. I was staring into a mirror that reminded me of an old standing mirror you would see in fancy homes.

The floor had fooled me right from the get-go.

There was never any floor to roof mirrors, public restrooms, or anything like that. It was all an illusion before I had even set a single foot onto the floor. I was fooled before I had even realized it. Unfortunately, I was now paranoid that I was still trapped.

I had no reasonable way to tell other than try to descend from here. I entered the door with the symbol of an eye on it. I waited for two days at the top of the stairwell with the door behind me closed. Nothing more happened.

I didn’t think there was going to be any more layers to this illusion, so it was time to descend to the next floor.