It was at first no more than a few thumps, a noise similar to the cacophony of one’s heart drumming and pounding against their chest after feeling some intense emotion. As his breathing reflexes kicked in, he attempted to perceive his surroundings and focus on the beating he could hear. His eyelids were heavy; he could muster neither the strength nor the willpower to open them. The only thing he could do was focus and seek to understand what was happening as he regained his energy.

His entire body was unresponsive, his senses numb to everything but the sensation of the humid air around him. He forced himself to exhale, then inhale until his lungs were full. The task was hard but not beyond him, much to his regret: coughing and choking, he could now smell the stench of rot accompanied by the sickening aroma of decayed meat. A shiver coursed through his spine and his stomach turned.

Although being nauseous was a common occurrence for him, he could usually attribute it to his illness. This was not it. It was a different feeling than usual, more comparable to motion sickness. He felt like his whole being had been shaken, beaten down and thrown into a mixer. His eyes felt as if they had been pushed out of their sockets, only being held in by his eyelids.

As he turned to the side to let out a stream of spit, he understood he had been lying on his back on a hard and rocky surface for some time. He managed to open his eyes, but he still was mostly unable to see - the room was pitch black except for a faint, dim white light a little further away.

Standing up, his legs shaking, he slowly stumbled towards the glow. Collecting his thoughts as much as he was able to, he observed that it was the moonlight through a crack in the stone wall. He could feel a breeze on his skin and could not help but take a big whiff of the salty wind as he listened to the waves crashing in the distance. The familiar sound relaxed him briefly.

However, the worry didn’t completely vanish; he still had no idea how he had come to this gloomy place. After a moment, his worry changed to fear. The noise he had heard earlier was back and was getting sharper, clearer… closer. He usually had a calm mind and an objective approach to things. Being scared was not something he experienced often.

But scared he was, as he listened to the rumbling sound, the banging of wood against some hard surface, the distant echo of metal chains clattering together… and a muffled cry, a desperate scream of agony. Common sense dictated to run, get away as fast as possible. And he would have, if only had he been able to.

He swallowed his saliva, paralyzed with anxiety. As time passed, his eyes had focused, and he now noticed there was only a single exit. There was no choice but to walk towards the dreadful melody of anguish.

Perhaps there was someone who needed his help, he thought. He tried to take courage in the idea of coming to the rescue of somebody – that was reason enough to move forward. He knew he was lying to himself, however; he was in no shape to help anybody. Despite his larger stature, the feeling of brittleness was something he was accustomed to, yet he felt weaker than he ever had.

He approached the door and attempted to relax for a few more seconds, to no avail. He tried to lean on it, hoping it would open; instead, his shoulder made the wet wood sink in on itself, the material remarkably old and moldy.

He pulled back and slowly turned the rusty handle.

Fear temporarily subsided for confusion. He had not taken a single step, yet he found himself in a long marble corridor, darkness and light intertwining to reveal a mirror-image: whether he looked ahead or behind, there was no trace of the room he had previously been in.

Was he losing his mind, he wondered? He would not have defined himself as a beacon of sanity, but the whole scene was beyond surreal. Being transported instantly from a place to another led him to believe one of two things. The first option was that his memory was faulty, and he had simply got there on his own without being able to remember. Perhaps a trauma or some external factor had alterated what he could recall from the past few minutes. The second, much less probable, was that he had somehow violated what little he knew of the laws of physics and had been teleported across some distance away from the previous room.

And the noise. That terrible noise. The thumping noise kept crawling towards him, growing louder and louder, an amalgam of metallic screeches and high-pitched screams, the sound of hell itself. Yet, despite the lingering fear, he strangely found himself drawn to it.

He kept walking forward.