I can vaguely remember something dragging me back through the woods. I wasn’t aware of much else, beyond the vague impression that I had been stung by an insect with some kind of paralytic venom.
I felt a rush of air hit my face as the door swung shut in front of me. Then the lights came on and I realized where I was. The Devil’s Toy Box.
The room’s construction was actually pretty impressive. The floor was a thick sheet of Plexiglas layered over a mirror identical to the ones that made up the ceiling and walls. With the door shut, the mirror on its other side was just as seamless as the rest. Thin fluorescent bulbs ran between the crevices where each mirror met the next, washing the room and its endless reflections in a dim white light.
I made the mistake of looking down at the chasm of reflections below me and almost fainted. I shut my eyes and held out my hands, feeling for the nearest wall. I leaned against it while trying to force my head to stop spinning. Someone was whispering my name.
“Joel…” I opened my eyes to see my reflection smiling at me as it said, “You’re his now.”
I let out a startled scream and backed away from the mirror I was leaning against. Something was moving around behind my reflection. It was hard to see what it was at first, but something was climbing up THROUGH the corridor of my reflections, making its way towards me.
As it got closer, I saw that the something was me. Well, not exactly. His features were too blurred, as if this reflection of me had been so far back that its face had been reduced to a distorted mess. THAT was the Joel that was coming for me.
I began to bang on the entrance-wall, which felt padlocked into place. I let out a frustrated scream and finally turned to face the thing coming for me, only to find that my reflections had returned to normal. There was no longer a blurry Joel coming for me. I let out a reflexive sigh of relief. A beat later, it emerged from the mirror beneath me and grabbed onto my legs.