lively softness

You sit down quietly to read another story

, but suddenly your perception of things changes.

You suddenly notice that you are in whiteness. It's

strange. Just a moment ago, you were sitting in your seat, and suddenly, whiteness.

You slowly begin to regain your own way of seeing.

The sense of distinguishing between top and bottom also begins to function.

You notice the outlines of a room of a standard average size with a mass of incomprehensible, smudged, and soaked posters on the walls, ceiling, and floor, stuck one on top of the other

in some sort of escape reflex. The lack of windows, doors, and external access becomes immediately noticeable.

The room is lit by a standing night lamp on a table

after a lamp. You see a rather old wooden table, rotten from moisture. Papers lying on it

are similar in material and construction. A chair sits next to the table.

You look around to investigate the conditions you find yourself in.

You also feel the urge to look for an exit.

You are surprised by this urge.

Apart from the objects you noticed, the room contains no things worth naming or isolating.

You become aware of the stuffiness and dampness around you.

You begin to nervously pace the room.

You are struck by the density of the posters, their number, and the lack of a visible piece. The walls, ceiling, and floor, not covered with them

, their soft, spongy consistency bends slightly under your feet.

As you look at them more closely, you notice everything:

old movie posters, advertising leaflets, newspaper clippings, notices from poles, calendar pages, written pieces of notebooks.

After a few laps, with a strange calmness, you start tearing off the leaflets from one place, trying to get to the wall.

The pieces of paper come off with a damp smoothness

, peeling off more and more. You notice that the posters that are deeper are more stained and stickily illegible.

Panicking slightly, you delve deeper and deeper

, but you still encounter a shapeless, watery paper goo.

Finally, you notice that you are standing ankle-deep in the goo you pulled out of the wall.

You are tired and decide to rest and think.

What's more, it's quite stuffy.

You approach the table where there are several new movie posters with glue on them and an advertisement with tear-off phone numbers stuck to them. In a gesture that

surprises you, you instinctively tear off one phone number from the adhesive tape and put it in your pocket,

then, tired, you move the lamp closer and sit down on a chair,

but when you sit down, you notice something terrifying

The legs you first touched the chair with become completely limp and insensitive.

Your back, supported by a reflex movement, also loses feeling and the ability to move.

One of the hands you used for support is now hanging in a grotesque pose.

You panic.

You try to send signals to your legs to let you break away and get up.

Unfortunately, to no

avail, with your still-functional hand, you try to reach the table to pull yourself towards it. It's standing

there, but it's too far away.

You feel paralysis slowly creeping up to your chest with tiny steps and

spasmodic movements. You start rocking the chair, swinging your good arm and head

from side to side. Finally, the chair collapses with you, and you, gripping the pages, panickily pull yourself away from it with one hand.

Finally, exhausted and almost completely numb, you fall asleep.

You wake up slowly,

not recognizing where you are.

Slowly, however, the wisps of sleep detach and you look at the shining light of the lightbulb.

You feel yourself lightly clinging to the floor.

Next to you lies a An overturned chair,

trying to get up, still feeling weak and a slight numbness in your foot.

You stand up, swaying slightly and tearing off pieces of paper stuck to your face.

You're still in the same room.

You have no idea how long you've been lying there or whether it's worth trying to get out any further.

You decide to act systematically,

hobbling around the room again, carefully reading the signs and knocking on the walls.

You do the same with the floor, except for the spot where the chair is.

You pick up a lamp and examine it carefully. It's

an ordinary night lamp with a switch and a power cord.

You fiddle with the switch for a moment.

Darkness and silence envelop you.

For a moment, you remain motionless, feeling something around you thicken and get closer. Suddenly,

something cold stings your neck.

You quickly turn on the lamp, turning

behind you, but there's nothing.

As you rub your neck, you feel a cold droplet of water,

its taste sweet and sticky.

You continue searching. You follow the lamp cord disappearing among the debris.

It comes out of the corner of the room,

pulling it slightly, it comes out, pulling more,

so you continue

all the way. A shiny black cable emerges, first thinner, then thicker.

After about five meters, you encounter resistance

because this cable is the only guide and direction in this symmetrical place, so you take it as a guide.

You start digging in the corner from which it emerges.

At first, it's difficult, but when you reach the spongy, soggy, deeper part, it starts to get easier.

The cable goes a bit sideways.

Eventually, it's so deep that you have to enter the excavated hole to deepen it further.

After a while, you dig as if in a trance, shining a lamp on yourself, pulling out remnants of moldy newspapers from in front of you and stuffing them behind you with your feet, thus blocking your retreat.

You don't know how long this tiring activity lasts.

You're so exhausted, and the slime around you is so spongy, that you move, pulling the cable towards you and pushing the paper apart with your hands.

Finally, your hand encounters a knot in the cable, and beyond that there's only empty space.

You stick your head out and shine the lamp on you, and you begin to admire the peculiar view.

You find yourself on the edge of the vault of a large, oval cave chamber, from whose edges protrude long black cables similar to yours at regular intervals.

They form a peculiar, circular, multiple pattern.

Below, they merge into a thick bundle running down the center.

Impressed by this subtle structure, you stare at this structure for an unspecified time.

A feeling of heat on your hands snaps you out of this state.

You instinctively let go of the heated lamp

and see it falling. and it falls down, its faint light growing fainter and fainter.

Nooo, you scream mindlessly. You rush after it.

You feel the whistle of air and shadows hitting your body.

Only now do you realize that you've thrown yourself into the abyss

with a cry of despair. To your own stupor, you land in living softness.

You feel millions of elongated creatures swimming around you.

You try to stand up, but your legs rest on the moving mass.

You want to catch your breath, but only long moths fly into your lungs.

Finally, miraculously, you sense the light switch.

You turn on the

creatures, rustling, floating away

in the light. You see more lamps, which you also turn on.

They illuminate your path to the next and the next

until finally, the entire floor of the chamber is illuminated, and of the living creatures, only slow black leeches clinging to your feet remain.

You feel them, with their characteristic precision, begin to suck out your organic juices,

inhibiting your movement. As you walk around the edge of the chamber, searching for an exit,

however, there's no sign of one

. You come to the strange conclusion that Placing a door somewhere on the side would destroy the beautiful symmetry of this place.

Thinking this way, you decide that the only exit must be in the middle where all the cables converge.

However, you only see an old telephone box there.

This faint sign of civilization gives you strange hope.

You pick up the phone.

Silence.

You dial some emergency numbers.

Silence.

You try to call family and friends.

Silence,

in some paranoid gesture, you dial the number of the ad in your pocket.

"Yes, I'm listening," a friendly female voice says. "I'm asking

about a used gas stove, is it still available?" You're completely out of control of your words.

"Yes, of course, it's slightly scratched, but it's still under warranty. We're selling it because they cut off the gas supply to our house.

"Sad, how long have you been living without gas?" You say calmly, feeling another leech on your leg sucking out a large part of you.

"It's been two months, but we have electricity and plumbing.

" "So when can I come and see it?"

-Preferably in an hour because then I'm at work, but first please dial 17 on the phone to get out of the room

-Thank you, goodbye

-Goodbye

You hang up the phone, feeling like an idiot, especially since you already have a gas stove.

However, the instinct of self-preservation and a sharp pain in your feet take over and you return to your proper reasoning.

You immediately dial 17.

Seventeen entrances open around the room, each one glowing a different color.

You choose dark green as the most reliable.

Walking down the greenish corridor, you feel the leeches (visible from this light) slowly sucking themselves off your feet and, heavy and drunk, they freeze in place.

You, on the other hand, feel increasingly thirsty and weakened, apparently deprived of energy reserves by these black worms. Withered,

with wrinkled, aged skin, you drag yourself to an old-fashioned room where an old man with thick glasses is making a chair out of layers of paper

-eat, drink- You rasp in a voice swollen with fatigue

. "Just a moment, please sit down, in a moment I'll finish this chair and try to make something for you," the old man said, as if casually.

You humbly sit down on one of the dozens of identical chairs and watch him work.

Every now and then the old man takes and tears out a thin piece of paper, arranges it into the right shape and sticks it to the emerging chair, then paints it in a wooden color. "

Where do you get so much paper?" you ask with undisguised curiosity

. "Simply, if I have the last piece of paper left, I draw on it with paint, a new notebook, and I tear it out.

" "And if you run out of paint?" "

I glue a new one from the paper. "

Surprised by this reasoning, you meditate for a long moment on the simplicity of the world around you.

"So what do you need?" the old man asks, and only then do you notice that another new chair already stands in the room. "I

just need to quench my thirst and satisfy my hunger."

"What do you mean?"

-Something to eat and drink, please, because I'm exhausted - you're more and more surprised by your own sentence structure

-and what does it look like - the old man asks specifically

So you approach and, with an unskilled hand, paint him a loaf of bread and a glass of milk.

After a moment of observing through thick glasses, the old man expertly shapes the flat loaf, trims the ends, and paints it a crisp wheat color.

He rolls the glass into a roll and pats it down. The milk comes out rather stiff, like yogurt, because, as he says, he has no experience in mixing liquids.

You quickly devour the tasty and refreshing treats

with milk, though you help yourself with a hastily constructed spoon.

"Thank you very much, you saved my life," you say to most of you with a grateful smile

. "Let's not exaggerate, you could have bitten off a piece of the wall

." "Thanks anyway, and by the way, do you know where the exit is

?" "What does it look like?"

"If I knew, I wouldn't ask," you reply with unconstructive precision. "

Then I won't draw it for you," the old man says with a hint of unfulfilled sadness in his voice.

"But can you give me a map

?"

You sketch out the map ideas for him and explain the basic markings.

A moment later, you're holding a beautiful map of the chamber and surrounding area in a 1:1000 scale. "

Could I borrow your brush?"

"Sure, take it, I have more than I can hold in my fingers at once."

"Thank you very much, goodbye

." "And so, goodbye."

Walking back down the green corridor to a safe distance, you pull out the map and draw a side branch with the brush.

Entering it, you draw a path that's getting longer and higher and higher.

Thinking you've gone far enough, you draw your own town,

familiar streets and shops.

Walking along the marked sidewalks, you refine all the details.

Finally, the time comes to return to the place where you started reading the story.

Paying attention to precision, you can finally find yourself in your original position and read the story to the end with peace.

Bored with the monotonous action, you go to sleep.