Washing Machine World

Date: 4/21/2016

People were gossiping about recent reports of students vanishing on campus. I was like: "why aren't people checking the cameras?". So, I went downstairs in search of the school's camera room. Eventually, I walked into a dark and narrow basement. One of the doors was slightly ajar and I pushed it open. It creaked loudly, announcing my presence to everything in the hallway. Inside were many rows of computers with flickering green screens and static noise. There was a small washing machine in the back. I didn't find that peculiar for some reason. Suddenly, some elderly janitor popped out of nowhere and stared at me blankly. He said in a somewhat robotic voice: "I know what you're looking for." To my surprise, he slammed his fist on one of the screens and a surveillance video began playing. In the footage, a student was walking down a flight of stairs when a purple and black shadow Thing strangled him from behind and dragged him away. The student was screaming and flailing about, but no one was there to rescue him for some reason? With much protest, he was dragged downstairs and stuffed into the washing machine. The screen flickered black for a few seconds. After that, both the Thing and the student were gone. The janitor looked at me with a somewhat sad expression before speaking up again. "You should go." He pointed at the washing machine, then added, "be sure not to lose anything." Without questioning him, I crawled in. There was a long tunnel inside. I kept crawling and crawling until my forehead slammed into what felt like a door. I pushed it open and fell headfirst out. It was the computer room again, except everything was tinted dark blue. A group of humans(?) sat in a row of chairs facing a computer. One by one, they twisted their necks around like owls to stare at me with sullen eyes. The atmosphere was heavy and unsettling. Overcome by fear, I slowly backed inside the washing machine and closed the glass door. Abruptly, a door on the far end of the room swung open and several Things floated into the room. The humans(?) jerked their heads simultaneously to stare at them. One of the Things slowly morphed into the shape of a young man, and looking through the glass door, I immediately recognized him as the student from the surveillance video! "We were waiting," announced the student in a rather snide voice. The group of people assembled into single file line and began marching simultaneously towards the exit door. The entire time I kept thinking to myself: "Uhhh gotta get the hell outta here", so I look back but I only feel a wall at the back of the washing machine. Even after the humans had left, the (human student?) Thing remained in the room, as if he was waiting for someone. I finally mustered some courage and stepped out of the machine and stared him straight in the eyes. He smirked a little. "Coward. You just watched your classmates march to their deaths." Suddenly, I heard screams coming from another room, and the ground rumbled like an earthquake. Some of the chairs and tables fell over. Then everything was silent. "You could have saved them but it's too late," he said whilst shrugging. Immediately after that, he cast away all aspects of his humanity. He let out a garble which sounded like a strange mashup between the eruption of a volcano and some sound effect from the Grudge. Next, his eyes turned blood red and melted like ink down his colorless face. He opened his gigantic mouth and streams of saliva hung from his sharp teeth. His hair grew into something like tangled black seaweed and wrapped themselves around my leg. I pulled and pulled but it wouldn't come loose. Conveniently, there was a mechanical pencil on the ground. I snatched it up and cut away at his hair. However, before pulling away, one of the strands caught onto my shoe and yanked it off. I was panicking too much to care and with shaking hands I jerked open the washing machine door and crawled back inside, slamming and locking the door (somehow). I crawled and crawled back until my forehead slammed into what felt like a door. No matter how hard I pushed, I couldn't open the door back to my world. *thud* That monster couldn't have followed me through the machine, right? *thud* *thud* *THUD* "OPEN THE HELL UP!!!!!!" I furiously banged on the door. The narrow tunnel walls suffocated me and it was getting incredibly difficult to breathe. Finally, I saw the old janitor through the window of the washing machine. He was shaking his head. "You can't come back if you have lost something in the other world."