Laying awake in my bed, staring at the ceiling, I was zoned out listening to the torrential downpour and faint rumbles of thunder of a passing storm. Isolated and banned from the world, I was doomed to exist without being or giving love to those I desired to be in my life.
As the storm faded away, I began thinking about Katherine, and wandered how I could see her despite the Enemy dictating our lives, imposing inhumane torturous affliction on our emotional well-beings.
Even as I laid there, I could feel the Enemy's watchful gaze analyzing every move I made. I knew they were watching me. I knew that they knew that I knew. Fuck them, their rules, and their laws. I was going to love who I wanted, anyway. It was always inevitable.
I decided to get online and look for a dating service that might stealthily bring Katherine and I together. I got online and scoured the web. I eventually found myself on Craigslist, browsing the Personals section. One particular listing caught my eye: "Egg Hunt for Singles at Lostrooms Apartments". The listing described an egg scavenger hunt specifically for singles looking to mingle. I replied to the post, and I was sent an email invitation that gave instructions on how to find the place, and to print and bring the email to the event. The email concluded with a P.S. stating that Katherine would be there, and that the event was organized by D.A.R.B. - whatever that meant.
Being a gullible dumbass, I was desperate and anxious to see Katherine after 7 years. I got in my decaying 2011 Ford Escape, and followed the directions in the email to the Lostrooms Apartments. Although I had lived in this city all my life, I had never heard of the Lostrooms Apartments.
The day was gloomy and overcast, and I found myself on the outskirts of town that seemed to be in a state of deterioration and neglect. I arrived at a large monolithic plain brick building that had a concrete sign that read "Welcome to the Lostrooms Apartments". The building more closely resembled a warehouse, around four stories tall, and it had virtually no windows. The only entrance was a single metal door with only a small square window. There was no landscaping on the property, and the building was immediately surrounded by a drab asphalt parking lot.
Hesitant to enter, I waited for a few moments. There were other cars in the lot, so I decided to enter the enigmatic "apartment" building.
When I entered, I found myself in a strange indoor commons area, which had a single skylight high above it. The floor was made of dark oak wood, and on either side were multi-level homely apartments facing inward, with balconies on the upper levels. The floor was covered in large white and brown eggs. Something felt "off" about it, and there was a still, eerie silence that unsettled my instincts - something was "off" about the place. There wasn't another soul to been seen anywhere.
Uncertain of what to do next, I cautiously stepped over the eggs, making my way down the endless corridor of seemingly abandoned apartments.
Then I saw Katherine. She was alone, crying in a cage made of barbed wire. I began to cry, full of anger and hatred toward the Enemy who had imprisoned her here in this purgatory. Time had been stolen from us, and I felt wrath rise up within me; I would never forgive for stolen time.
Furious, I clawed with my bare hands at the barbed wire, ripping it to shreds, cutting my hands and arms in the process, and I bled all over the floor. Despite the pain, I kept dismantling the inhumane confinement, and now Katherine was free.
Myself brutalized and Katherine deprived of nutrition, we both needed to heal. We decided to enter an apartment to look for a first aid kit and food.
The first apartment we entered was empty and devoid of life. The walls were bare, painted in a turquoise color. There was no furniture or any decor at all. The lights and plumbing worked, so the apartment seemed "active", although it was vacant.
The apartment was several stories tall with a complex layout, and we explored all the rooms. We found a first aid kit under a bathroom sink on the top level, and Katherine bandaged me up, stopping the bleeding.
Hungry, we still needed food. We thought we might find food in another apartment, so we went back down to the first level, but there was no longer any exit back out into the corridor. Becoming confused and disoriented, we were unsure if we were even still in the same apartment. The layout on the ground level had now changed, and so we began looking in the other rooms.
Each room led to another. Then another. And another. The apartment now seemed to be an endless labyrinthine hodge-podge of empty rooms. The more we tried backtracking, the more lost we became. The place was a trap, and we were unable to escape back out into the free world.
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Eventually, we found a kitchen that had a working refrigerator full of bottles of water and cabinets stocked with food. We feasted, and we found a couple backpacks in a closet in an adjacent bedroom. We filled up our backpacks with supplies, and we continued looking for an exit from this endless purgatory.
Time perception didn't seem to exist here, so we had no idea how long we had been wandering the Lostrooms at this point. We ourselves were lost, with no idea of how to escape.
At some point, we spotted a turquoise cat that had abnormally large, round ears and enlarged eyes. We followed it through the maze of empty apartment rooms and hallways, until we came to a bedroom that had a single oak desk with a vintage laptop on it. The cat vanished under the desk, but Katherine and I saw that the laptop had a message that seemed to be just for us.
The message on the screen read, "Seek the eggs of your true desire, and you shall be free." The vague message felt like a hint, so we took it with a grain of salt. The bedroom had a single closed oak door. We opened it together, and we found ourselves out in the corridor covered in eggs.
The eggs all looked identical in the endless corridor, but Katherine and I examined them all, searching for any sign or distinction that set them apart from the rest. Eventually, we discovered an egg that was blue and purple with a symbol of fairy wings on it. Just as I was picking it up to put it in my backpack, the egg cracked apart and out popped Ilayda, who was in the form of a small winged water fairy! Being only several inches tall, she grew to her regular size.
Ilayda was now free from the confines of her small egg, and she joined Katherine and I on our egg hunt.
The search went faster, now that there were three of us. Not long after finding Ilayda, we found another distinct egg that was blue with a sunflower on it. I cuddled the egg in my arms, and it cracked apart. Inside was a real sunflower that had a fading glow, and the flower seemed to be drying up. I watered it, and then the sunflower transformed into Rebekah, and her hair had a golden glow.
All three sisters were now free, and I was ready to escape this Purgatory and build a life with them. We wandered the endless apartment corridor for an unknown amount of time, hoping to find the exit.
The turquoise cat reappeared, and guided us through the eggs until we came to the same door I had entered earlier.
The door was closed and locked. It seemed we still needed a key to escape. Now that we knew where the exit was, we searched for another unique egg. Not more than a few yards from the door, Katherine found a golden egg with a key symbol on it.
The egg was solid gold, so we huddled together, using our body heat to melt the gold into a key. Together, we unlocked the exit, and we stepped forth into the shining dawn of our future together.
We were no longer lost in the Lostrooms.
We were now free.