Before I can get into the real meat of my story, we must first understand where this all began. Unfortunately, I have little notes or details in regards to the first three days primarily because, at the time, I thought this was all an inconvenient sequence of one-off dreams, nothing to worry about, right?

The first time I had any real experience with what would later become an extended vacation to whatever layer of hell I would find myself within was both bizarre and unexpected. It was around three weeks after the previous incident; I had just come back to my flat from a busy day of study; the history degree I was working towards required that, on Fridays, I would be on campus for around ten hours consecutively, to put it mildly, it was a highly fatigue-inducing procedure. Since I had an event planned on Saturday morning, I decided to finish up some study work in my flat, make myself something to eat and chill out for the rest of the night.

After I dozed off to sleep, I found myself inside a white abyss; everywhere I looked around me was an endless screen of bright white. There were no textures, no shadows, no evidence of me even being inside something other than a truly endless expanse of nothingness; there was no sound, no echo, not even the faint hum of electronics; the only sound was my pulsing heart and my bated breath.

I was wearing my clothes earlier that day; my clothes were exactly as they were, including the ironing crease on my left shoulder I had accidentally made like an absolute moron a few days before. Of note, the whole “wearing the clothes of the day” thing appeared a repeating occurrence in the lions share of the nightmares from this time forth; rather strange for these items to be carried over in such pristine detail, would one not agree.

There was no smell or even feeling around me; I couldn’t even feel the gentle runs of wind across my arms and head; there was, in all definitions of the word, nothing.

I was suspended, floating, drifting around for what felt like a few minutes before the sound of my alarm clock blaring brought me back to the real world. Somewhat confused and disorientated, I slowly came to my senses and moved on as nothing had happened.

As an aside, the event went better than expected; it was a social event within campus grounds where a large group of people would come together and discuss political situations and theories, the same group I covered in the prelude section earlier, as a matter of fact, the trouble makers from then had been booted from the group; one was even barred from returning to the main campus entirely; the idiot got exactly what he deserved.

That night I found myself back in the empty void-like expanse, only this time it wasn’t quite so barren and featureless. I appeared to be standing within a room of sorts; there were very faint creases in the textureless white all around that denoted a roughly rectangular chamber, the long sides being around twice the length of the short sides. The ceiling must have been around ten feet from the floor, rather high, considering in the UK, the recommended floor to ceiling height is eight and a half feet.

Of note, there was a faint hum coming from somewhere in the room; the hum had a slight reverb denoting its origin within the mostly empty chamber. It wasn’t deafening, but it persisted no matter where I turned like the sound was coming from within my own head, it seemed.

Looking around, there was a grey table and a chair up against one of the shorter sides. They were exceptionally bulky but otherwise unremarkable; they looked like the kind of thing one could buy at a garden centre, just fatter and grey.

Approaching the table, I noticed that something was resting on top of it not far from the chair as if somebody was sitting there at some point with the object directly in front of them; it looked like a piece of paper, but yellowed and clearly very old, but much more interesting was that there appeared to be something on the paper.

Standing adjacent to the chair, I cautiously pick the paper up and attempt to read its contents. The text was exceptionally poorly written, so much so that it was functionally illegible without the writer being there to translate the chicken scratches. However, what was clear was that the writer was trying to relay something about an object; around halfway down the page, the writer started drawing strange obelisk-like constructs covered in a language I couldn’t understand; they had also shaded the obelisks entirely black.

At that moment, I felt the room move, a violent shudder as the walls jolted and swayed with vindictive might knocked me to the floor with an unceremonious thud, my ears began to ring, and my vision hazy from the impact. The ringing grew louder and louder to the point that my head began to hurt, only for the ringing to mutate into my alarm clock once again.

I can’t honestly remember what I was doing that day other than more studying and a brief trip to the universities library, a library which was woefully under-booked for the number of students who routinely required literature material from it. I remember this one book was a fundamental requirement for the entire class to read before a seminar around a week later, but there were only five copies for a set of sixty-three…

That night things stayed mostly the same; there was an extensive lack of changes to the bleached room other than the addition of a door with no handle, which I tried to open but couldn’t; it appeared to be sealed shut by something within the door frame itself. The table and chair had shifted a few feet towards the centre of the room; whether something moved them or the violent shake last night had shifted them was entirely unknown. The phantom hum was still there, albeit a slight bit quieter and more distant now.

Sadly there isn’t really much more to say about the first three days since it was all rather mundane and simple, but this was all in preparation for day four…