Chapter 36: Teeth (2)
It was a very strange film.
At the very beginning, the footage showed a continuous journey through a circular corridor. The base color of the corridor was red, and the walls were covered with rows of white circular tiles that jutted outward. The camera moved forward in a first-person perspective; no person walking could be seen—only the chaotic, low murmurs in the background, and the sticky, dragging sound of footsteps.
Don’t look… don’t look…
Everly kept telling herself not to watch, but the images on the screen were so simple, yet so aggressively intrusive, like a dense fishing net that trapped her gaze, hooking it fast, impossible to break free.
She couldn’t stop herself from watching.
The corridor spiraled upward. Although the floor tiles were white, time had worn them, giving them a faint yellow tint, and each tile looked slightly different upon close inspection. As the camera advanced, similar—but never completely identical—scenes appeared repeatedly, paired with the strange background sound and the white noise caused by low resolution, creating an intense feeling of irritation and discomfort for the viewer.
This repeated for an unknown length of time. The long period of forced staring left Everly’s eyes dry. She wanted to blink, but metal plates held her upper and lower eyelids rigidly in place. No matter how hard she tried, the only thing she could do was move her eyeballs up and down—the more they moved, the drier they became; the drier they became, the more she moved them…
As the pressure in her eyes climbed, and her negative emotions finally accumulated to a critical point, a crackling signal interference sounded, and the screen flashed white for a second.
The white “snow” screen vanished as quickly as it appeared, and when the image returned, Everly saw a white light at the end of the corridor.