HAA.

     She drops the letter on the kitchen counter and returns to her room. Soon after, she looks out her window to see a black car with tinted windows parked outside. Harper sighs, “Who this time?” She had seen the recurring trend of these cars staking out from the side of her house. Harper quickly ran out her front door shouting, “Get the fuck out ya’ rat bastards!” No response is noticeable from the vehicle, nor any sort of response from whoever is in it. Slowly, the car drives away and down the neighborhood block. “About time…” says Harper.

Harper returns inside and reaches for a box on top of the fridge. She opens it up and inside is a single picture of a man in a suit with his arm around a woman in a white coat. On the photo it reads, “Samantha Glove and Wayne Glove, 2001” Harper recognizes these figures as her parents, her way of ever seeing them. A memorial not built to linger. She turns over the photo to see the exact eye symbol she had viewed upon the letter. “What does this even mean?” she thought. Harper reaches for the letter and begins to open it. Before she fully opens the letter, she hears someone trying to enter. “Clint? Already?” Harper checks the time and is surprised to see it was already 6:56 PM. Clint had usually returned by 7 PM, yet he was always quick to ask Harper to do as many chores as he could think of. She ran to her room with the letter and photo and closed the door. Soon after returning, she grabs her TV remote and turns it on. Harper says under her breath, “Background noise…just any background noise.” She puts the image of parents and the letter together, then takes the letter and crumples it into her pocket. Harper then approaches the mirror, once again looking into her reflection.

Harper barely recognizes her reflection. She knew this was a common occurrence for her, yet she was constantly tired and fearful of it. She approaches her bed and crouches down. The darkness of the underside of the bed almost radiated with unease. Harper turned on her phone flashlight and searched under it, pulling out old clothes, toys, and even lost pencils. She finds a single white revolver under the bed. It had six chambers, yet only four bullets had been loaded within. She whispered in a raspy voice, “Hers…I think…” Harper grabbed onto the gun with as little force as possible and got up then continued to approach her mirror. Harper lifted the revolver against her mirror and cocked it back. “Who even are you?” she shouts before noticing a movement of the mirror.

It almost moved outward, a pulse from the mirror. A pulsing movement from this plain and simple object. Harper ignores this, then slightly picks up on the news broadcast from the TV. A news reporter states, “The virus deaths are increasing heavily here in the U.S as you can see from the charts…” The broadcast is cut off by static. Harper refocuses her attention and clings her finger to the trigger, pressing the barrel against the mirror.

The mirror soon distorts, disfiguring itself beyond recognition. Panic ensues, soon causing Harper to run backwards and grab whatever she can. All she can reach is an old large, brown cloak lying upon the ground that belonged to her brother and a single bottom of almond water. She stumbles to the floor, almost losing her phone from her pocket and the gun from her hand. Yet instead of feeling the cushiony landing of her carpet, she feels the light descent through the floor. Harper falls into darkness, a void that makes her head throb just from the sight of it. She can’t stop screaming, whether she pulled herself together or not. The only memory attaching herself back to reality was a simple one, the memory of the tree carving. Harper calms herself and steadies her breathing. Soon after, she stops screaming. She falls and falls a distance she can’t even comprehend before landing.

Yellow. Pure yellow. Yellow lights buzz loudly as her face lifts from the old moist carpet. With her head fully lifted, she views the surroundings of empty hallways coated in basic wallpaper. Harper gathers her gun, cloak, water and phone before dusting herself off. She saw a single different room though, a room with a chair with a table in the center and different wallpaper across the walls, along with bookshelves scattered across the sides of it. Harper had descended upon the Backrooms. Meanwhile, in her room the letter had fallen from her pocket, halfway opened, Barely just visible, it read, “ANOMALY PLACEMENT EXPERIMENT #1624 AUTHORIZED, PRAISE BE THE HAA.”