I wasn't crying anymore. That had stopped about thirty minutes in, once I'd realized no one was coming to let me out. Not that I'd expected my so-called friends to have a sudden change of heart. Tyler, Marcus, and David had made it perfectly clear what they thought of me when they'd shoved me into this closet, laughing as they wedged a chair under the handle.
"Maybe someone will find you Monday, June-bug," Tyler had said, his voice filtering through the door. "If you're lucky."
It was Friday. The last bell had rung over an hour ago.
I shifted position, trying to restore circulation to my left foot. Something fell off the shelf behind me, rattling loudly as it hit the concrete floor. I flinched at the noise, then reached out blindly in the darkness, my fingers closing around a plastic spray bottle. I set it carefully back on the shelf.
The worst part wasn't being trapped. It wasn't even the humiliation. It was knowing that six months ago, these same guys would have been defending me from bullies, not becoming them. We'd been friends since elementary school—Tyler and I had even gone to the same summer camp four years running. But something had changed when we started junior year. Maybe it was when Tyler made the varsity basketball team, or when Marcus started dating Heather Collins. Whatever the reason, I had gradually transformed from friend to liability, and finally to target.
I leaned my head back against the shelf and closed my eyes, though it made no difference in the darkness. Memories flickered through my mind: the four of us at Marcus's fourteenth birthday, staying up all night playing video games; the camping trip last summer where David had fallen into the lake and we'd all laughed until we couldn't breathe; Tyler and me building that rickety tree house in sixth grade that his dad made us tear down because it violated some neighborhood code.
All gone now, replaced by cruel jokes and shoulders that turned cold whenever I approached. At first, I thought it was just a phase—that they'd get tired of whatever game they were playing and things would go back to normal. But weeks had turned into months, and the distance had only grown, punctuated by increasingly public humiliations like this one.
A sound in the hallway made me freeze. Footsteps, slow and steady, coming closer. I scrambled to my feet, wincing as blood rushed back into my numb legs.
"Hello?" I called, pounding on the door. "Is someone there? I'm stuck in here!"
The footsteps paused. I heard keys jingling, then a grunt as someone tried the door handle.
"Who's in there?" A gruff voice—Mr. Reyes, the night janitor.
"It's June," I said, my voice cracking with relief. "I got locked in."
Another grunt, then the sound of a key turning in the lock. The door swung open, flooding the closet with fluorescent light that made me squint. Mr. Reyes stood there, a set of keys hanging from his belt, his salt-and-pepper eyebrows drawn together in concern.
"Jesus, kid. How long you been in there?"
I blinked rapidly, my eyes adjusting to the light. "Since last period. Around two, I think."
He checked his watch and frowned. "It's almost five. Why would someone—" He stopped, understanding dawning on his weathered face. "Ah. Those friends of yours again?"
I looked down, heat rising to my cheeks. Of course he knew. The entire school probably knew that June had gone from decent social standing to bottom of the heap in record time.
"It was just a joke," I mumbled, stepping out into the hallway. My legs were still tingling, making me stumble slightly.
Mr. Reyes steadied me with a hand on my shoulder. "Some joke. You want me to call your parents?"
"No!" The word came out sharper than I intended. The last thing I needed was my parents finding out about this. "I mean, no thank you. I'm fine. I'll just walk home."
I shouldered my backpack and headed for the school's main entrance, trying to ignore the stiffness in my legs. The hallways were deserted, the usual chatter and slamming lockers replaced by an eerie silence. My footsteps echoed against the rows of blue metal lockers, each one furnished with the usual assortment of stickers, photos, and mini whiteboards. So normal. So mundane. As if I hadn't just spent hours contemplating whether anyone would even notice if I disappeared completely.
Outside, the spring air was cooler than I expected. The sky had clouded over while I was trapped, and a light drizzle was falling, the kind that doesn't look like much but somehow soaks you completely within minutes. I pulled up my hood and started the mile-and-a-half walk home, taking the route that avoided the main roads where I might run into anyone from school.
As I walked, my thoughts drifted to what awaited me at home. Two years ago, my life had been normal, boring, even. I had friends. My parents were happy, or at least doing a convincing impression of it. Then I'd come home early from a canceled soccer practice to find my dad and Mrs. Ellison from next door on our living room couch, doing things that neighbors definitely shouldn't do together.
I'd just stood there in the doorway, my soccer bag still slung over my shoulder, as they scrambled to cover themselves. Dad had started saying something... explanations, excuses, I don't know, but I'd turned and walked out, wandering around the neighborhood until dinner time.
I never told Mom. I was afraid. But, somehow she found out anyway, and instead of confronting him or leaving him, she'd decided to get even. Three months later, I overheard Dad shouting about her and Mr. Petroski, her boss at the insurance office. The next morning, they both acted like nothing had happened, passing the coffee and making small talk about the weather as if they hadn't been screaming about infidelity hours earlier. That became our new normal. They stayed together, sleeping in the same bed, eating at the same table, but the silence between them had weight. It pressed down on our house, making the air thick and hard to breathe. They didn't fight anymore, fighting would require acknowledging what had happened, but the tension hummed constantly, like high-voltage power lines.
I'd tried to talk to Tyler about it back then. He'd been sympathetic at first, letting me crash at his place a few times when things got really bad at home. But as the months dragged on, I could see him getting annoyed with my constant problems. That was probably when the distance started. Nobody wants to hang out with the kid whose life is one long, depressing soap opera.
A car horn blared, jolting me from my thoughts. I'd reached the intersection near Oakridge Park without even realizing it. The driver who'd honked glared at me as they drove past, apparently I'd been standing at the green light, staring into space.
I crossed quickly and cut through the park, following the gravel path that wound through a small copse of trees. The rain was falling more steadily now, droplets clinging to my eyelashes and running down my neck. In the distance, I could see the outline of our subdivision, row after row of nearly identical houses with their manicured lawns and two-car garages. The American dream, packaged and sold in convenient, soul-crushing units.
I paused at the edge of the park, suddenly reluctant to go home. What was the point? Mom would be in the kitchen, pretending to work on her laptop but really just avoiding Dad. Dad would be in his study doing the same. They'd ask perfunctory questions about my day, not really listening to the answers. We'd eat dinner in front of the TV because conversation had become too difficult. Then I'd go to my room and pretend to do homework while actually just staring at the ceiling, wondering how my life had turned into such a mess.
A deep weariness settled over me, heavier than my rain-soaked clothes. What had happened to the life I was supposed to have? The one where I had friends and a family that wasn't held together with lies and silence? The one where I looked forward to things instead of just enduring each day?
I was so tired of it all. The betrayals, big and small. The casual cruelty of former friends. The deafening silence of a home that no longer felt like one. The constant pretending that everything was fine when nothing had been fine for a very long time.
"I wish it would all just end," I whispered, the words carried away by the rain. "I wish the whole stupid world would just... stop."
??ˋ ★ ?ˊ?
The ground beneath my feet trembled. At first, I thought it was a heavy truck passing nearby. But then the trembling intensified, a low rumble building to a high pitch unnatural scream that seemed to come from everywhere at once. It was the kind of sound you feel more than hear, the kind that vibrates through your bones and settles in the pit of your stomach like dread given physical form. I froze, my brain struggling to process what was happening. Earthquake? But we didn't get earthquakes here, not in this part of the country. A bomb, maybe? Some kind of attack? The possibilities flickered through my mind like cards in a shuffle.
Then the city collapsed silently.
The buildings of the city skyline in the distance, the corner store across from the park, the hotdog cart not twenty feet away, the guy riding his bicycle along the path, they all suddenly squeezed into the ground. There was no explosion or dramatic crash, just a sickening sound like wet cardboard being crushed. It reminded me of how I'd once stepped on an empty juice box as a child, fascinated by how it could be there one moment and essentially gone the next, compressed into near nothingness. But buildings aren't juice boxes. People aren't things to be flattened.
The world doesn't just... fold in on itself.
Except it did.
Where the buildings had stood seconds before, there were now only perfectly shaped craters, exactly matching the footprints of the structures that had been there. Where people had been driving, small puddles of blood remained, the only evidence they had ever existed at all. The bicycle lay flattened at the edge of its own small depression in the earth, its rider nowhere to be seen. It was as if some giant, invisible hand had pressed down, squeezing everything that had substance into the thinnest possible version of itself, leaving only outlines and remnants behind.
I could only stare in speechless horror at the impossible scene before me. My mind refused to accept what my eyes were seeing, creating a strange disconnect where I felt both hyperaware of every detail and completely detached from the scene. Is this what going insane feels like? I wondered.
Though, I certainly wasn't alone in my shock. The few other people who'd been walking in the park were still there, all of us having somehow been spared from whatever had just happened.
An elderly woman with a small dog stood frozen on the path, her face a mask of incomprehension. Two college-aged guys who'd been running away from rain were now staring open-mouthed at the devastation. A mother clutched her young daughter to her chest, both of them trembling. We were like islands in a sea of destruction, spared for reasons I couldn't begin to understand.
We all looked at each other, confirming we weren't hallucinating. The old woman's mouth moved, but no sound came out.
Whatever had happened, it clearly wasn't over. The ground began to tremble again, more violently this time, as if something massive was moving beneath our feet. The vibrations grew stronger, focused now on the center of the park where a small family had been probably rushing for home.
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With a deafening crack, something burst up through the grass where they'd been sitting. A massive drill, at least six feet in diameter, tore through the earth, and through the family. Their bodies were ripped apart instantly, reduced to mangled bits of flesh and sprays of blood that painted the surrounding grass in bloody crimson. It happened so quickly, so violently, that my brain couldn't process it as real. It was like watching a horror movie where the special effects are too extreme to be believable. Except the copper smell of blood reaching my nostrils was undeniably real.
I staggered backward, bile rising in my throat. The college guys turned and ran. The mother screamed, picking up her child and following them.
The drill continued to rise, revealing itself to be attached to some kind of rusted, decrepit machine. It looked ancient and cobbled together from mismatched parts, belching black smoke as it fully emerged from the ground. The metal was corroded, parts barely glued together. It seemed impossible that such a thing could even function, held together more by unlikely prayers than engineering principles.
With a grinding screech that set my teeth on edge, a door on the side of the machine opened. Thick black smoke poured out, followed by hacking coughs and cursing in a language I'd never heard before. Three... things jumped out, swatting at the smoke and continuing to bicker.
"hcg hgu kb bjb jn bvb nv vknj cxvxdv?"
"dxvsd..."
They were short, maybe three and a half feet tall at most, with mottled green skin stretched over twisted features. Their ears were long and pointed, their teeth yellow and jagged, their eyes an unnatural shade of yellow with vertical pupils like a cat's.
They wore almost nothing, crude jackets that didn't fully cover their body or strange little spiral penises. All three appeared to be male, though I couldn't be certain given how alien they looked. They were like something from a fantasy novel or a role-playing game. Goblins. The word came to me unbidden, pulled from countless movies and games, yet seeing them in the flesh was nothing like the sanitized versions I'd grown up with.
"bjknnfwf..."
"fsff weff s fewf esfe."
The goblins continued arguing, their voices rising in pitch and intensity. Their language sounded like gibberish, all harsh consonants and noises. The argument escalated until one of them, the largest, with a single tuft of hair on his otherwise bald head, pulled out a crude cactus club studded with sharp spikes and thorns.
With a howl, he swung it at one of his companions, connecting solidly with the smaller goblin's head. It immediately howled in pain and blue blood sprayed from the wound, splattering across the remains of the family.
But, instead of dying, the injured goblin shrieked in rage and launched itself at its attacker. The third joined in, and soon all three were locked in combat, rolling around in the blood and gore that covered the ground, seemingly oblivious to the few shocked humans watching them. Their fight, though, was very comical.
The old woman's dog broke free from her grip and ran barking toward the fighting creatures. Without pausing their brawl, the one with the club swung it casually, catching the dog mid-leap and sending it flying in a spray of red.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity but was probably less than a minute, they broke apart, all bleeding from various wounds, their blue blood mixing with the red human blood on the grass.
The smallest one, now sporting a nasty gash across his forehead, angirly reached behind his back and pulled out a scroll.
It seemed to appear from nowhere, I was certain he hadn't been carrying it before. The other two immediately stopped fighting and, working together with sudden cooperation, hauled what looked like a stone archway from the machine, which also couldn't possibly fit inside the small chamber.
It was massive, at least ten feet high and eight feet wide. It looked like the entrance to one of the many city underground train station.
The two larger creatures set the archway on the ground with surprising gentleness, positioning it carefully to stand upright. Meanwhile, the small one, bleeding from a gash on his forehead, unrolled a heavy scroll.
He squinted down at it, mouth moving soundlessly at first, then cleared his throat and began to read. His voice was rough but steady, carrying words that didn’t seem his own.
"Sur… survi... surviving rezz-i-dence... of Urth," he announced proudly, then squinted harder, mouthing the next few lines.
Offi... Official Proclamation of the Eight Monarchs. By decree of the Eight Monarchs of the Dungeon World…
This pro... pro... proclamation hereby announces the formal annexation of the planet known as Urth into the Dungeon World system as Layer Nine.
Effective immediately, all former governments, institutions, and territorial claims of Urth are dissolved. All lands, resources, and lives residing upon this world are now the rightful property of the Dungeon Monarchs. All surviving humans are hereby granted temporary passage to relocate from the surface of Layer Nine. Portals like this one have been established across your world to facilitate this transition. You may choose to enter any layer of the Dungeon World; however, it is strongly advised that you remain under the protection of the Monarch who now controls your zone.
He looked up triumphantly and back at the two goblin. After the first initial stuttering, the goblin spoke fluently as any human would. He quickly squinted back at the parchment.
Before being granted permanent residency within any layer, all humans must complete a Trial of Worthiness.
These trials will test your abilities, resourcefulness, and determination. Those who complete their trials successfully will be assigned appropriate status within the Dungeon hierarchy. The most exceptional performer from each territorial zone will be appointed as Leader of their people and granted audience with their respective Monarch.
At the edge of the ruins, the elderly woman had begun to crawl away, moving slowly across the torn grass. She didn’t make it far.
Without missing a word, one of the larger goblins casually pulled a small metallic object from his belt and tossed it in her direction. It bounced once, then exploded in a burst of green fire. When the smoke cleared, there was nothing left but a blackened outline.
The goblins howled with laughter, even as the small one pressed on, voice unshaken.
You are allotted exactly sixty minutes from the delivery of this proclamation to enter a transition portal. Once this period expires, all portals will close, and automated cleansing protocols will commence across the surface.
He snapped the scroll shut with a small, smug flourish.
Any unauthorized presence on the surface after this time will be considered hostile and eliminated without exception.
The goblins exchanged glances, muttering something among themselves. The portal's glow intensified, bathing the park in cold light.
For those with grievances or petitions, these may only be addressed by proceeding to deeper layers and formally presenting your case before the Dungeon Monarchs or their designated representatives. No appeals will be heard on the surface.
There was a finality to the last line that sucked the air from the broken park.
"You have one hour," the small goblin said plainly, voice almost bored now. "Then portal closes."
Without waiting for a reply, they turned and climbed back into their miraculous Drill Dozer. The heavy hatch slammed shut with a metallic groan, a rusted panel shearing off and crashing to the ground. Yet the drill roared to life once more, black smoke belching into the air as it ground its way back into the earth, leaving only the train entrance standing in the middle of the bloody park.
The college guys had long since disappeared. The grandma was dead. Only the mother with her child and I remained, staring at each other across the devastation.
"What do we do?" she whispered, clutching her daughter tighter.
The little girl looked up at her mother, then pointed at the train station entrance with its shimmering blue light. "Mommy, I think we have to go through there."
The mother shook her head frantically. "No, baby. We need to find Daddy. We need to go home."
"There is no home anymore," the child said, her voice oddly calm. "The voice told me. Everything's changing now."
...
The rain hadn't let up. It rolled off my hood and dripped down the back of my neck, soaking into the collar of my shirt. I couldn't seem to move. The entrance portal glowed a few yards away, humming softly, casting a blue shimmer over the bloodstained grass. The mother with her child was still standing near the tree line, whispering something to the little girl while looking over her shoulder at the place where the drill had vanished.
Meanwhile, my mind reeled, trying to process not just what had happened. The world - my world - had been annexed, claimed by creatures from some other dimension. Earth was now "Layer Nine" of some cosmic dungeon system. What the fuck?
I thought about my parents. Were they even alive? Had our house been crushed like everything else? Or were they standing in front of another portal somewhere, hearing the same insane proclamation from a different set of creatures? Part of me wanted to run home, to see for myself. But the subdivision was gone, just craters where houses had been. And those "cleaning protocols" the goblin had mentioned... the casual way they'd vaporized that old woman...
One hour. We had one hour before those portals closed. Before whatever came next started.
I could go looking for my parents, but what then? Die together when the portals closed? And honestly, would they even be looking for me? They'd been emotionally absent for so long, living in their bubble of mutual resentment. Would Dad pause his affair to wonder where I was during the apocalypse? Would Mom stop plotting her revenge long enough to care?
Through all this, I should have been thinking more clearly. I should have been panicking, or running, or screaming at the sky. But my mind was heavy and still, like it had sunk to the bottom of a lake. As if some part of me had already accepted that this was happening. That the world I knew was gone.
Then the voice came, a male and robotic.
"Don’t waste time. Run. Now is your best chance."
It didn't come from outside. Instead, it seemed to directly ring inside my head. Like someone giving casual instructions during a disaster drill. I spun around, scanning the park.
No one was near me. The mother and her kid had started backing away, but no one was talking. No one was close enough to be talking.
"Who—" My voice cracked. "Who the hell is that?"
I half-expected the voice to vanish like some stress-induced hallucination. Instead, it returned, Irritated, like I was wasting its time.
"You heard me. Get in the damn portal. Before the good stuff’s picked clean by idiots faster than you. Right now, the native dungeon forces are still moving. Setting up strongholds. Claiming zones. Moving resources. They're disorganized, distracted. For the next few hours, the territory is wide open. Loot caches, artifacts, monster lairs... unguarded or barely defended. If you wait, it’ll all be taken."
Loot? Artifacts? Monster lairs?
I licked rain off my lips, trying to find words that didn’t sound like screaming. "What... what are you?" I managed to croak.
"A Passenger," it said, flatly as if that explained everything.
"What the hell is a passenger, now?"
God. I really was losing it.
I turned slowly in a full circle, taking in what was left of the city. It was so quiet now. The usual background noise of sirens, cars, distant voices, even birds... all of it was gone. Only the rain remained, and the deep silence of absence. The skyline was missing, replaced by uneven craters and blackened edges. In the distance, beyond the park, I could see where a shopping plaza and the rows of houses had once stood. Now it was just a flat plain with holes where lives used to be. It looked like the land had been walked over by giants.
Trials of Worthiness. Dungeon hierarchy. Monarchs. The words from the proclamation echoed in my head. We were being forced into some kind of system, with levels and trials and... what, monsters? Treasure?
A few people in the distance had already started to make their way toward the other portals. They moved like ghosts, maybe because they were scared or perhaps they heard voices in their heads too. Whether they were running on blind panic or calculation, they'd made their choice.
My options seemed limited.
I took a slow breath, tried to steady my thoughts. “Why are you in my head?”
"You wanna live...?"
I hesitated. Did I?
"...This is the part where you stop playing twenty damn questions and start moving. Once the portal collapses, the surface becomes a dead zone. No resources. No Food. Just decay and rot and scavengers. You think the goblins doing their job were bad? Wait until the second wave hits. This is your window. You go now, or you die."
The voice was like an itch in the back of my head, but inside. It was like a bug crawling restlessly, but I was unable to scratch or shoo it away.
The whole situation felt absurdly familiar. I’d seen stuff like this before. Not in real life, obviously. In games. In Dungeon Watchers, Delve, that one modded Skyrim pack where portals just popped up like they were part of the scenery.
Hell, I still had my old stack of DnD books under my bed. “The Player’s Handbook,” all three Monster Manuals, even that weird homebrew supplement David printed for our campaign sophomore year. It had rules for goblin merchants who sold cursed items for teeth. We used to argue about loot tables and initiative rolls like our lives depended on them. Now those same goblins were beating each other to death with rusted clubs in a public park. I almost laughed. Almost.
A part of me wondered, half-joking, half-hoping, if this was it. If I’d finally snapped and my brain decided to drop me into a game interface just to cope.
I focused, clenching my jaw. "Menu," I said in my head.
Nothing happened. I tried again, this time just thinking it. Menu. Status. Character Sheet. Help.
No HUD. No floating stats or helpful tutorial prompts. Just cold rain, wet grass, and the faint stench of blood still hanging in the air. I snorted under my breath, a sharp, humorless sound that came out more like a cough.
“Right,” I muttered. “Figures.”
If this was a game, it wasn't like any I'd played before. Maybe I'd hit my head when they shoved me into that closet. Maybe I'd accidentally inhaled some cleaning chemicals and was having some elaborate trip.
Yet, whatever explanation I reached for slipped through my fingers the second I remembered the murderhobo goblins, the miraculous Drill Dozer, the family. The old woman. That had been real. Too real in fact.
A shiver ran through me, starting in my spine and crawling out to my limbs. The rain had completely soaked through my clothes by now, and I'd started to experience the biting cold. More explosions lit up in the distance, more goblin drills poured out from the ground, setting more portals. Meanwhile, the dungeon portal that looked like an entrance to an underground train station was the only shelter nearby. Whatever was happening, hallucination, dream, or apocalypse, standing in the rain wasn't going to help.
And Who would miss me if I disappeared through that portal? Probably Nobody. Nobody would search for June. And that, strangely, felt like freedom.
The portal was the only shelter left. There were no buildings anymore. No overhangs or doorways to duck into. Just this arch and the strange blue light inside it, humming faintly like it wanted me to come closer.
So, I stopped thinking, ducked my head and ran toward it.