Door number zero

Author's name: Badr Ramadan

There comes a moment, when danger draws ever closer to your breath, until you feel it creeping into your chest before settling in your lungs... when the sounds around you turn into hoarse whispers, drenched in fear, like the echo of souls sobbing behind walls... when cold hands reach out from nowhere, hands without bodies, searching only for something to be pulled, snatched away... there, logic has no voice, and thought has no role... in that moment... you have no choice... either you flee... or you are erased forever! I chose to flee... not because I was certain that the red light that pierced the darkness was my path to salvation... but because something, something I cannot describe, was moving behind me, breathing on my shoulder, pushing me toward the unknown... The light before me shone with a strange heat, like an ember that did not burn, but warned... It was the final barrier between me and an entity I could not describe, neither form nor name... only a feeling... as if existence itself were rejecting it, as if staying in its place meant my irreversible end... But fleeing... did not come without a price... for to survive is to understand... and to understand is to suffer... and there, in my first steps into the glare, I was about to learn the first law of this hell... not every door that opens... is one you can enter!