//------------------------------// // Confusion // Story: The Crystal Human // by PhoenixHorseGuy //------------------------------// I woke up laying on the cold, hard ground. Everything was sore. I had a pounding headache as well. I was staring up at a ceiling that seemed to be made of… well, I couldn’t tell what it was made of. It wasn’t fiberglass or wood, that’s for certain. I wonder why it’s so sparkly, though. You would think it was made out of polished diamonds or crystals or something. But that’s just ridiculous. A ceiling made out of diamonds? That sounds stupidly expensive and very structurally unsound. Seems the wall and floor are made out of the same material. So a room made of diamonds. Interesting. Guess it could just be some sort of fancy wall covering or something. That would explain why it hasn’t collapsed in on itself. Seems the door I was laying next to didn’t get the same treatment. And the doorknob was in reach. I could use that to help myself get up… …Or I could just get up like a normal person. Nothing seems to be broken, after all. After getting myself on my own two feet and confirming that nothing was broken, I had a quick look around. I could see a desk along the wall next to a window to the outside world. Looking through the drawers proved to be both uneventful and unrewarding. There were two other doors besides the one I was laying next to (which ended up leading to a closet). The one directly across from me leads to a bathroom, and the double door leads out into a hallway. There was also a bed near the center of the room. Why I couldn’t have woken up on that, I have no idea. Looking out the window, I could see more buildings made out of the same material as the room I was in. More importantly, I could see that I was pretty high up and that the entire outside of the building was made of the same stuff. There was a snow storm off in the distance, beyond the city border. I just had to hope that it didn’t come this way, cause if it did then I was fucked. It was cold enough around here already! I don’t need snow to add on to my list of problems. “… Well, I have two ways out. Go through the door and see if I can find anyone, or go through the window and face my untimely demise.” ... “I’ll try the door first.” And with that, I left the room and started wandering the halls of… wherever I was. My boots echoed through the halls with every step I took as I started thinking of all the possibilities. “Is this a dream? No, the headache proves it isn’t. You don’t feel pain in dreams. This looks too detailed to be a dream, anyway. Drug trip, maybe? Possible, but I don’t know any drugs that would give me such vivid hallucinations. Maybe I no clipped into the backrooms? No, that’s just an internet creepypasta. Besides, these hallways don’t feel liminal enough.” I checked yet another door, only to find yet another storage room. Seems every room so far is either a bedroom or storage room. I haven’t found anyone, yet it seems this building was populated at some point. “It’s like everyone just… vanished one day and everything they left behind was frozen in time. It’s sort of uncanny.” The monotony of what was roughly an hour and a half journey ended when I opened a door which led not to a storage room or bedroom, but to a kitchen. A large one at that. It was also several hundred years out of date from the design of it. Still, it was better than nothing. At least I knew that I wouldn’t starve for a while. “Hopefully the food is as well preserved as the rest of this place.” Looking through the cabinets I managed to find a few apples. Even better, they were still fresh. So fresh you would think that they came straight from the orchard that they were grown on. Same thing with the bananas and oranges I found. It was while I was eating one of the oranges that I decided this place was as good as any to see what belongings of mine went on this little trip with me. Grabbing a nearby piece of paper (which seemed to have some sort of gibberish written on it) and flipping it around to the back, I found a pen in my pocket and started taking inventory. Items I found while digging around in my pockets: One cellphone. Currently has 94% battery. No service. One pair of wired headphones. One metal pen. One box cutter One name tag One pair of sunglasses. (Lenses are tinted orange) One pocket knife One wallet. Contents listed below: - One driver's license. - One $5 bill, two $1 bills and some loose change. Added together, that gives me $7.43. - One library card. - One Debit Card - Two Barnes and Nobles gift cards (amount not listed, probably used up already) And just because I got bored… Clothing inventory: One blue jean jacket (or denim jacket. Whichever term you prefer.) One hoodie (gray) One long sleeved shirt (dark green) One pair of cargo pants (kahki khaki) One belt (brown) One pair of steel toed boots (brown) One pair of socks (white) One pair of fingerless gloves (black) One beanie (dark green) The clothing inventory was entirely unnecessary. It was just my attempt to distract myself from my rather persistent headache. It didn’t work. If anything, I think it made it worse. Maybe I should try and see if this place has some sort of infirmary? They’ve got to have some sort of medicine to treat headaches, right? Or maybe I can find some while rummaging around in this buildings seemingly infinite bed and baths? No, finding an infirmary is better. Even if I don’t find something to treat my headache, I can at least find stuff to treat any other problems that might arise. I stopped my thoughts as I remembered that I have zero medical experience, meaning that, even if I did find medical supplies, I would have no idea how to use them properly. “I am so fucked if I manage to break something.” It’s been about two hours since my kitchen raid. Maybe. I’m not sure. Maybe wherever I am only has forty-five minute hours. Or maybe an hour here is three hours in my time? Does this place even have twenty-four hour days? Has the concept of time even been invented ye- No. Stop that, brain. You're getting sidetracked. Again. At the current moment, I am going to assume that there are twenty-four hours in a day and sixty minutes in an hour. Therefore, according to my phone, I have been wandering around this place for two hours. I still have not seen a single living soul, and my plan to find an infirmary has gone nowhere. Well, I guess that’s not true. It has gone everywhere except the infirmary. I managed to find a staircase that goes all the way down to ground level. Haven’t gone down there yet, but I have made a mental note of where it is. Should prove useful if I need to quickly evict myself from building grounds for whatever reason. For now, my curiosity as to what this building is has kept me hostage within the building itself. It’s only been fed by the fact that everything here looks like it was made by humans, yet clearly weren’t designed with humans in mind. It’s almost as if a bunch of midgets lived here. And my curiosity has quite possibly hit its climax as I stand before the large double-doors before me. They were made out of some sort of dark blue wood, and I would have to bend down to grab the door handles, which were two golden rings on some rope. Thankfully I didn’t have to, as a good shove was more than enough to get these doors open. The fact I’ve been able to get into every room in this place without once encountering a locked door is both funny and concerning. I know these people have door locks. I’ve seen them in the bedrooms and bathrooms, as well as most of the storage rooms. “Perhaps this place had an open door policy? Or maybe the occupants didn’t have enough time to lock their doors before… Whatever happened to them?” I was taken out of my thoughts as I examined the room before me. It was massive, easily the largest room in the entire building, but it was also the most empty. There were windows along the walls to the outside world, giving the room plenty of natural lighting. I followed the purple carpet on the floor until my eyes saw a black chair with some sort of dark blue covering on parts of it. Behind it was a collection of the diamond/crystal stuff the castle was made out of, framing the chair in a way that made it look more intimidating than it actually was. Glancing over the rest of the room again, I began to wonder what it was for, before a realization hit me. A throne. This was a throne room. I’m in a palace. All this time, I’ve been exploring an abandoned palace. … … … I think my brain shut down at that moment, only for the reemergence of my headache to bring me back to reality. “I’m in a palace.” I repeated in my mind. “I’m in this places center of government. And no one is here. An empty palace… where am I? What happened here? Why did everyone just… abandon this place? Is the rest of the city this empty? If so, why abandon it?” “There’s some weird shit going on… and I’m gonna find out what.” My legs chose that moment to protest the idea of more walking. I looked at the throne in front of me and got an idea. “It does look like a nice chair…” I muttered to myself. “… Eh, screw it. The owners are clearly long gone. It’s not like they’ll ever find out.” I sat down on the throne – well, more laid down. The throne didn’t seem to have any legs and was instead attached to the ground – and got myself comfortable. It was surprisingly comfortable, considering the fact that this was nothing but a fancy wooden chair with two cushions on it – one on the bottom and one on the back. Not that I was going to complain, of course. My headache also seemed to be dying down once again, though experience has already shown me that that won’t last forever. With a place to rest a head that was only trapped in a dull throb, I began to think again about everything that has happened. “Let’s see… I was walking home from work when… something happened. I was knocked out and woke up in that bedroom with a headache and a sore body. Afterwards, I started exploring this abandoned palace. Now, for the first question. What brought me here?” I replayed my walk home from work in my head a few times, trying to remember anything I might’ve overlooked at the time. “I do remember looking up at the sky near the… end of… it… Did I slip on some ice and hit my head? That would explain it quite nicely, wouldn’t it?” I put my back up farther against the back of the chair and pinched the bridge of my nose, closing my eyes as I did so. “Yeah, it does. Doesn’t explain why I’m in the middle of an empty palace at the center of a city in God-knows-where, though. Maybe I’m in a coma, and this really is all just a dream?” I pinched myself and felt a little bit of pain. “Nope. Guess my theory that this isn’t a dream still holds up.” I let myself get lost in my thoughts for a moment longer before that entire train got derailed by a single idea: “I should listen to some music. Might help me concentrate.” I knew that line of thinking was bullshit. Listening to music would just distract me. I needed to think through… well, everything. I needed to figure out where I was, how I got here, and how to get home. Answers as to what happened here would be nice, but those were a secondary objective. Still… It might help me relax. This whole situation has been stressful, to say the least. I could use a little unwinding. That’s how I found myself opening Spotify and looking through my downloaded albums, headphones plugged in with my phone at 87% battery. “’Nothing But The Best’? No. ‘Pebble Brain’? Nah. ‘Foxlore’? Not in the mood. Ah, here we are. ‘Chronicle’. This should be good.” I hit play and sat back, closing my eyes and allowing the voice of John Fogerty to ease away my stress, even if just by a little. I like the way you walk I like the way you talk Suzie Q The man from the magazine Said I was on my way I’m not sure when I started singing along to John, but I wasn’t planning on stopping anytime soon. Somewhere I lost connections I ran out of songs to play I was so into the music that I didn’t even notice as the doors to the throne room opened and what sounded like four pairs of footsteps walked in, stopping a good distance away from me. I came into town a one night stand Looks like my plans fell through Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again While I didn’t hear or see them, I could still feel them in the room with me. I knew I wasn’t alone anymore. I took the fact that they weren’t trying to stop me as a good thing, and continued singing along to the music with my best singing in the shower voice. If I only had a dollar For every song I sung And by that, I of course mean that I am dogshit at singing. Sure, I used to be good. I was even in the choir at one point. Then my voice dropped, and now I can’t sing for shit. Every time I've had to play While people sat there drunk Or maybe I still can sing? Perhaps it’s simply a case of needing to retrain my voice so that I can stop trying to sing alto as a baritone. Eh, it’s not a big deal. You know I'd catch the next train Back to where I live Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again I just realized how rude I’m being by pretending my guests don’t exist so that I could keep singing. I was also hearing something… odd. Were those wind chimes? Why did they bring wind chimes, of all things? Oh Lord, I'm stuck in Lodi again Well, no time like the present. I opened my eyes to see… two unicorns. One was white with a purple mane, and the other was pink. The pink ones horn was glowing a nice baby blue. – ‘so that’s where the wind chime noise is coming from' - I just stared at them as John started singing about a green river, utterly dumbfounded. And they stared back, seeming to be equally dumbfounded by the current situation. We stared at the each other for what felt like an eternity before I broke the silence with the first thing that came to mind: “Um… hi?”