Day 322

You don't remember how you got there, the mansion style school.
It felt like you'd been there for years, wandering the pristine corridors from dawn til dusk.
At sunset your vision would fade and you'd wake at dawn, perfectly awake and ready to wander.
This place was endless, you have walked thirty floors so far and the staircase just spiralled up.

Sometimes you'd hear footsteps on the floor above you, they thudded along matching your pace.
Other times you'd glance out of a window and see many figures on the grassy fields around the place.
You thought about knocking but you're so high up they look like ants, they wouldn't hear you.
The stairs seemed endless, what was the point in you continually heading up?

Going down seemed to go much faster, gradually you got a better look at the people in the fields.
They all walked so disjointedly, you could hear cracking sounds with their every step.
Suddenly meeting them felt like a bad idea, perhaps there was a way around or under them?
You began to thoroughly explore the ground floor, hoping for a back door.

There wasn't one, most of the rooms were just plain empty and faintly dusty.
You did find a door at the base of the stairwell which was your last (now only) resort.
Like every other door in the building it was open but unlike every other room, it had no floor.
There was only a ladder leading to what looked like a green pipe.

You stood a while by the door, unable to decide when the familiar sound of cracking drew close.
Rather than face the twisted people you chose to take your chances in the pipe, wherever it lead.
It was deceptively deep, at least nine or ten feet down, hopefully you were safer.
A sudden crack above your head made you look up and into the eyes of something inhuman.

Their face was... fractal... like bits and pieces of a photo stuck together into a face.
As they rotated their head in an owl-like way you could see the fragments of their neck crackling.
The pipe was big enough for you to stand in so you sprinted away, taking as many turns as possible.
You blacked out before you could run out of breath.

You woke up in the middle of a four-way pipe junction, endless tunnels in every direction.
Perhaps doing eenie, meenie, minie, moe would help?
As you began to mutter the old phrase you heard a faint cracking in the distance.
You couldn't tell which direction it was coming from, everything echoed too well in there.

Taking a deep breath you made a dash for it, picking more directions at random.
You nearly crashed into the fragmented thing, terrified you let out a shriek and made another turn.
They moved slowly but relentlessly, the cracking constantly at your back.
In between blacking out and waking up in the same place you managed to outrun it altogether.

The next few cycles (as you'd taken to calling them) were spent trying to find a way out of the pipes.
You debated marking the tunnels but decided against it in case the fragmented thing followed you.
In the end you just kept heading up and right, up and right, up and right.
There had to be an end, surely?

Months must have passed at this point, you wondered if anyone missed you.
Your thoughts soon turned to your loved ones, how long had it been?
Lost to your mind you didn't notice when the lighting changed from dull green to a whiter tone.
Before you could process the sudden change of atmosphere you saw the tunnel's end.

Rushing through you found yourself at on a concrete platform, overlooking the fields of the mansion.
There didn't appear to be any way down to the grass, which was strangely empty.
Usually there would be dozens of the fragmented things wandering it, where were they?
A sound like a thousand breaking branches came from behind you as your vision faded once more.