“There are no written ways to arrive at this.” Thomas thought. Hopelessly running from room to room, trying every door, and window. He screamed and yelled hoping that someone could hear him, but his calls were made in vain as no one ever came to help. Thomas wished he’d never done what did but his curiosity got the better of him, and now he was forever in hell forsaken to walk through the same 4 rooms. He would enter the kitchen to walk through the living room, into the bathroom, then to the bedroom just to be greeted by the kitchen once more. He had put himself in a loop forever repeating until he would one day go mad.

Eventually he found himself a rhythm hoping to prevent the inevitable madness of the human mind. He would take naps every few hours, read a book or two, and then spend a few hours walking around the loop, memorizing every single detail. While taking his daily walks Thomas noticed two things: The first being that the clocks kept up with some parameter of time and that there seemed to be a regular day and night cycle much like the world he remembered. The second thing he noticed was that no matter how much time had passed Thomas no longer required the basic functions humans would carry out, he didn’t need sleep, he never had the need for food, and he never got sick. Despite this change he kept this routine knowing that his mind was not as strong as his body.

Thomas was stuck here for what felt like weeks, continuing this cycle over and over again, and to his dismay nothing ever changed. With each passing hour of his daily walk he could feel himself becoming more frustrated, “Why is this happening?” “Why me?” he asked himself. “WHY ME!” he screamed as he took off running the eternal abyss of the repeating loop. Thomas ran and ran, continuing through each room even as the sun rose and set with the passing days. His anger slowly morphed into depression as he slowed his pace and fell to his knees. He looked down and cried into his hands, tired, mad, and hopeless.

A few more hours of crying and he ceased as he ran out of tears to shed, he stood on one knee pulling himself up, and as he looked forward he paused. Right there in front of him was a red door with a sign that read “EXIT”. Thomas couldn’t believe his eyes, as he examined each of the red, fluorescent letters that hung from the ceiling. Thomas pulled himself up the rest of the way, approaching the door. Then a thought entered his head “is this it? After all this was it finally over?” He began to laugh, a sick twisted laugh full of mania and exhaustion. “This is it!” he yelled, a sense of pride and anguish washed over him. Thomas twisted the handle and pushed through the doorway with all his might. Everything went black.

When Thomas woke up, dread formed a pit in his stomach as he found himself sitting on the floor of the kitchen. “No, no, no” he muttered as he got up running through each room trying every door and window, but nothing worked. Thomas couldn’t believe it, he thought to himself; “There are no written ways to arrive at this.”