After endless, soul-draining shifts at that wretched diner, you and your mother finally claw together enough cash to escape your crumbling apartment and move into something that almost resembles a home. It’s a two-story wooden house with a sagging attic and a cold, yawning basement—shockingly cheap for its size, which probably has everything to do with the fact that nothing in it seems to work, and it sits a full thirty minutes from the nearest sign of civilization.

“It’s still better than moldy walls and landlords who lie through their teeth,” your mother says every time you wrinkle your nose at the peeling wallpaper or creaking floorboards.

On move-in day, you spend hours battling the army of cobwebs and trying to make the splintering floors slightly less hazardous. But no matter how much there is to fix, your attention keeps drifting—to the looming presence of an old grandfather clock in the corner of the living room. Its brass face is dulled with age, the hands locked in a forgotten moment. Yet what captures you isn’t the clock itself—it’s the small, concealed door behind it. Barely large enough to crawl through. Hidden, and waiting.

That night, drawn by something you can’t quite explain, you return. You pull the door open, and a long, narrow tunnel stretches out in front of you—pitch black and impossibly still, like it hasn’t seen light in decades. Every instinct screams at you to walk away.

But you don’t.

Clutching a candle, you slide inside and begin to crawl. Dust clings to your skin. Silence presses in from all sides. Your mother’s voice echoes in your mind, sharp and sardonic: “There might be something valuable at the end… or worse—some freeloader squatting in the walls.”

You keep going.

And then—finally—you see it. An opening at the far end. Light.

And a head. Slowly peeking out.

You freeze. The figure jerks back, startled. As if you are the thing that doesn’t belong.

You stare at him/her. He/she stares at you.

It’s like looking into a cracked mirror from another reality. The person staring back is you—but of a completely different gender.

Identical eyes. Identical face. The same stunned expression, reflecting your own horror.

Time stops. Neither of you speaks. Neither of you moves.

Just one, thunderous thought crashing through your brain:

What the actual fuck?