20220206

Day 2,706

It was the kind of town that looked unfinished - dozens of dead end roads, unpainted signposts and shops that were fully furnished yet always closed. It was the kind of place that managed to make even the most oblivious tourist feel unwelcome within a matter of minutes.

It was home, but not to humans.

Occasionally someone would manage to lose their way badly enough to find themselves there, without phone signal or anyone around to here them scream. They always panic and try the closest payphone first, soon finding that it's just an empty shell rather than a functioning phone.

They they knock on empty houses and peer through empty shop windows until a human-enough hidden resident asks them if they are lost. They offer them a room that's technically inhabitable, albeit the proportions of every window, door and piece of furniture are all wrong.

They are offered a can of unlabelled soda and a sandwich with some kind of paste-filling and given a map to help them find their way back to the nearest highway. They will describe the experience to their friends and loved ones as "unsettling" and only start to wonder if they made it all up when they go to check the map again, finding it blank on both sides.

They will not manage to find their way back there again but the more they think about that town, the more worried they'll become, the more inconsistencies and subtle signs that the person they spoke to was anything but human, the more they'll wonder if it was all a bad dream instead.

They'll hope it was a bad dream.

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