BANG BANG BANG. Lewis frantically opened his eyes and found himself in an unfamiliar dark room. The room was similar to a cell block, with a small wooden bed and a desk in the other corner of the room. The walls and floor were made of dark concrete with different unknown stains all over them. A single light dangled from the ceiling along with a small chain attached.

A rancid smell of decaying animals hit him like a bus, he winced at the smell and slowly made it onto his feet. He had lost his old pajamas from the night before and it was replaced with this muddy colored suit someone would find at a cheap retail store and a pair of old sneakers to go along with it. 

He hesitantly made it to the door and found a small mailslot size hole around eye level. The slot slides open and a pair of golden snake-like eyes stare right into his eyes. “Your assignment for the day”. A folder was shoved through the opening and fell onto the ground. He picked up the folder and read the contents inside. 

#7V63E9: Assignment - Calculate risks of new dimensional pathways

Quota: 230 Pathways, Payment: 1 month off sentence 

Lewis processed what he just read, “Dimessional pathways, sentence…this doesn’t make any sense” he looked around his room, “none of this does”. 

The new environment, the new smells, the new clothes, everything made Lewis want to throw up. All the new stimuli made his spiral in a whirlpool of his own thoughts. Where am I? How did I get here? What is all of this? Who was that? When can I leave? Why am I here? But he had no way to answer his questions because the only thing that could have already left. Also he was too caught up in his own anxieties to even ask. Suddenly the paper started to glow and Lewis was enveloped in a large light.

He opened his eyes to find a long hallway filled with different shapes and sizes of doors on each side of the hallways. He picked himself up from the floor and carefully walked over to a door. It is a dark green colored door with a vine-like handle that has yellow flowers flowering along the handle. He tentatively gripped the handle and pushed the door open to be welcomed by a huge wave of rain causing his new clothes to get soaked. 

He slammed the door shut. After blinking out the water from his eyes, Lewis picked off some depre that landed on his head and shoulders. He shaked off some water from his clothes just like how a dog would after a bath. He powered through the sogginess and walked towards the next door. The squeak of his shoes echoed through the hallway as he came to the next door. 

The door was a short rounded door covered in sparkling jewels with a door knob of a large ruby crystal. He wanted to pull the jewels off the door but they wouldn’t budge, so he tried to big ruby but it opened the door. A large waft of heat and sweat poured out from the door. He looked inside to find tiny trolls with pickaxes, working in what seems to be a large mine with torches and wagons full of the same jewels as seen on the door. All of the workers were chanting some sort of song that went along to the clanging of their pickaxes against the ores in the mine. Lewis was drawn to the shiny jewels and crept into the mine to one of the wagons. Within a few seconds of rummaging through the wagon, one troll saw Lewis and yelled to the others.

He shoved a silver nugget and a few small multi-colored crystals into his pockets and rushed towards the door all the while the trolls were chasing after him. Thankfully to his longer legs he was able to outrun them and slam the door on them. A few deep breaths later Lewis checks his pockets to find no stones, only holes at the bottom of his pockets. He cursed out whoever picked out his clothes and went to pick the next door.

It was a sleek black door, with specks of white and red splattered all over the door. The handle of the door glowed a soft golden light similar to a single candle in a dark room. He delicately opened to find that it was similar to the forest that was behind his house back home. But obviously the sky was littered with different deep colored splotches. It seemed like nighttime because all the splotches were a multitude of blues, purples and even black at some points. The trees were almost the exact hemlock trees that would be filled with squirrels and bird nests, but the bark of the trees were all scratched up. Lewis looked at the scratches up close to try and figure out what could have made them, he ran his hand over the scratches to find that the depth of them were all over the place, some barely dug into the tree while others were almost 3 inches deep. There was no pattern to the scratches as well, they went up and down, left and right, straight and crooked, nothing that Lewis knew would make such random scars on a tree. 

Without warning a wolf-like creature topped onto Lewis and both of them stared into each other's eyes. The wolf’s eyes were similar to the eyes he saw when he received his assignment, the same golden and snake-like pupils. Lewis made the connection that maybe the wolf was related to the thing he saw before and started asking the questions that lingered in his head from his breakdown before. “What is this place? Where Am I? Who are you? When can I leave? How do I get out of here?” 

The wolf became more and more agitated after each question, with each passing second a mysterious red bubbling liquid was forming from its mouth. A small drop from its mouth went through Lewis’s legs and fell onto the grass beneath him. A tiny plume of smoke rose from the grass after the red liquid sizzled into the ground leaving a tiny burn spot behind. A slight singed mark on one of his pant legs mimicked the burn mark on the ground. 

Something clicked in Lewis’s brain, the creature on top of him mixed with it salivating just looking at him and following was a deep low growl from the back of its throat. It was hungry, very hungry. He kicked back the wolf and tried to escape. The force of the kick was able to knock back the wolf for a second but it wasn’t enough time for Lewis to get on his feet. As he was getting up the wolf slashed him in the back and he arched his back away from the wolf and hiss. His blood was running down his back and sweeping into his suit. 

With blood running down his leg, Lewis ran away from the wolf on pure adrenaline leaving a trail of blood for the wolf to follow him. He weaved through the trees with the wolf right on his tail, luckily the brush of the forest caused much confusion for the wolf because Lewis was so hard for the wolf to see. The wolf only followed the scent of Lewis’s blood which became less and less strong as he got away.  

Lewis flew out of the brush and spotted the door wide open and with the rest of his energy he was able to make it to the final stretch towards the door. But in the doorway stood a woman in a white suit with the same goddamn golden eyes and it had to be the one he saw before, it had to be. A sinister smile grew on her face and with a small flick on her wrist the door was ever so slowly closing. Lewis’s energy was running out and the wolf’s growls was getting louder and louder. He lunged towards the door but he was too late, the wolf grabbed his foot and the door closed right in front of him.