I know, it doesn’t sound like a big deal. At the time, it really wasn’t. But if I had known what it would escalate to, I definitely would have paid more attention to it.
The first time it happened was about three weeks ago. I woke up, needed to pee, crawled out of bed, and walked over to my closed door. And when I tried it, the handle didn’t move. For whatever reason, it was locked. I tried to remember if I had locked it the night before, but I came up blank.
«Weird» I muttered to myself as I unlocked it and made my way to the bathroom.
The next day, everything was normal, including my door. Same with the day after that, and the day that followed. By that point, I had basically forgotten it had ever happened.
Then, four days later, it happened again. I woke up to find that my bedroom door was locked. I was starting to get a bit confused, especially since I basically never used the lock on my door in the first place. My first thought was that my roommate was doing it, as a joke. He wasn’t a particularly funny person, but it was the best explanation I had.
I confronted him later that day, asking him if he’d been locking my door overnight. His expression was one of utter confusion. «What do you mean, have I been locking your door?»
«Twice now, I’ve woken up in the morning and found that my door is locked. I haven’t been locking it, and you’re the only other person here who could be» I said.
«Well, I haven’t touched your lock» He shrugged. «So I don’t know what’s going on either. Maybe you should hire a doorknob specialist or something to take a look at it?»
«I don’t think doorknob specialist is an actual job» I retorted.
My door locked itself for the third time two days after that. At this point, I had started to assume it was some weird issue with the lock. Maybe something had gotten inside it and was screwing up the mechanism.
It happened again the day after that. And the day that followed. Three days in a row.
Now, this was still far from a big deal. Every time it happened, I would try the handle, realize it was locked again, unlock it, and go about my day. But it was just so random and strange that I couldn’t help but wonder about it.
At this point, my roommate still insisted he had no idea what was going on, and even asked me if I was trying to play a joke on him. I eventually convinced him to let us switch rooms one night. At this point, my door had been locked in the morning every day for five days in a row.
I slept in his room that night, and learned two things. 1: that he has a nicer mattress than me. 2: that my door only locks itself when I’m the one sleeping in the room. My roommate woke up and reported that he’d gotten my door open with no trouble at all that morning.
And yet, when I slept in my room that night, I woke up once again to a locked door.
This went on for a week or two, and at this point I had just gotten used to it. Just another part of my morning routine. I kind of stopped caring about the reason at some point. My lock was just weird, and I had accepted that.
And then, three days ago, I woke up like normal. Got out of bed like normal. Walked over to my door like normal, tried the handle like normal, and found it locked like normal.
But this time, I tried to unlock the door and found it was stuck. The little tab I had to turn to unlock the door wouldn’t budge.
I twisted it harder. It didn’t give. I tried for a little longer, and was about to give up and start pounding on the door, yelling for my roommate, when the lock finally cooperated, and I got the door open.
I put it down to another issue with my weird lock, and jotted a reminder to call a locksmith down on a sticky note. I would probably just have to replace my doorknob or something.
Later that day, I was sitting in my room with the door shut, reading a book. I got a little hungry, so I got up to go grab a snack from the kitchen. But when I tried the door, it was locked.
And, even though this had been happening for weeks now, I was still surprised. It had only ever happened while I was asleep before, never during the day. It had followed a strict pattern, a pattern that was now broken.
Some part of me already seemed to know what would happen when I tried to unlock the door. Somehow it didn’t surprise me when the lock refused to budge. I pushed harder on the little tab, but it still didn’t go, and I stopped because I was worried I might break it. I fiddled with it for almost a full minute before giving up.
I knew my roommate was home, so I started pounding on the door and yelling his name. Sound travels really well through the house, so he should have been able to hear me. But I yelled until I felt like I’d been swallowing glass, and I desperately pounded on the door until my fists felt like they were about to shatter, and there was no response.
I took a step back, trying not to panic and doing my best to ignore my burning throat and hands. I still had my phone with me, so I grabbed it and called my roommate. But when I hit the call button, my screen flashed red and told me it had failed to connect. I restarted it, hoping that would solve the problem.
When it had finished rebooting, I tried again, with the exact same result. So I tried calling someone else, a close friend who lived down the road. But I couldn’t connect to him either.
I was starting to freak out a bit now. My phone was new, just two months old, and it had never done anything like this before. And unless my roommate had left unexpectedly, there was no reason he wouldn’t have been able to hear me. And that wasn’t even touching on the fact that I still had no idea what was wrong with my doorknob.
That was when I started kicking the door. Weakly at first, little toe kicks, but those gradually grew until I was ramming my entire foot into the door with so much force the walls shuddered with every hit. Yet my door didn’t give at all, just stayed shut and took the beating. I didn’t even chip the paint.
I was getting really freaked out at this point, and when I finally stopped attacking the door because my feet could no longer take it, I just collapsed down on my bed, giving up.
Somehow my door had totally locked itself and was now apparently indestructible. I was trapped in my bedroom.
And then it occurred to me that I didn’t need the door. I could just open the windows and go out through there! I hadn’t opened my thick drapes that morning, which was why I hadn’t remembered them earlier.
As I walked across the room to my window I could almost feel the relief running through my body. Our house was only one story tall, and I could easily open the windows to climb out, or even break them if I couldn’t get them open.
That relief vanished the moment I opened the curtains. It left my body so fast my jaw dropped, my arms went limp, and I just stared forward, trying to understand what I was seeing.
Or rather, what I wasn’t seeing.
There was nothing outside my window. Just an infinite sea of empty white space. Everything was just. gone.
I stumbled back until I fell onto my bed again, still staring at the impossible emptiness. What was going on?
A thought popped into my head, and I got up and ran back to my sealed door. There’s a little gap between the bottom of the door and the floor, and I knelt down and peered through it.
Normally, I would be able to see into the carpeted hallway, see the closed bathroom door across from my bedroom. But I couldn’t. That little gap only showed me more of that empty white space.
I think at that point I was just so freaked out that I didn’t even feel freaked out anymore. The panic was so overwhelming it was unnoticeable somehow.
I got up and grabbed a ruler from my desk, and fed it through the door gap, into the blank white space. I didn’t actually know what I was trying to achieve, just wondering what would happen. I pulled the ruler back out, and my eyes widened so far they hurt.
The part of the ruler that had stuck out from under the door wasn’t there anymore. It was just gone, somehow, and I was now holding onto a third of a ruler.
I think that was when I finally lost it.
There was no way this could be real. It had to be a dream, a hallucination, something. I must have been losing my mind, because this was impossible.
I don’t remember what I did for the rest of that first day. I think I just sat on my bed, slapping myself and trying to understand what was happening to me. My room had somehow cut itself off from the rest of the world, becoming some self-contained entity, and I had no way out of it.
I do remember trying my phone again. I still couldn’t make any phone calls or send texts. I tried a few other methods of sending messages, like discord and even standard email, but nothing would work. Not even 911.
I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I remember waking up and thinking «Thank god, it was just a dream» and then seeing my empty window and having all of my horrible reality come crashing down again.
Somehow, I felt a little more rational after I woke up. I guess my survival instincts must have kicked in, because I started taking inventory of all the stuff I had, trying to figure out how long I could last.
There’s a mini fridge in my room, which is the only reason I’m still alive at this point. I don’t drink alcohol, but I had it stocked with soda and some energy drinks, and a couple bottles of water. I’ve been very careful about managing that, because once that runs out I don’t know what I’ll do.
Food has been an even bigger problem. I go backpacking sometimes, and keep my pack in my closet. I went through it and found two energy bars that I didn’t take out the last time I unpacked it. There’s also a bag of saltwater taffy that I had stashed under my bed, because I don’t really trust my roommate with sweets. The bag is pretty good sized, and I’ve been trying to eat as little as possible. But I think it’ll only last me another two or three days. I’ve eaten one of the bars, and I’m saving the other for when I run out of taffy. I don’t have any other kind of food.
But as if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s also the fact that I don’t have access to a toilet.
I’ve been using my closet as a makeshift bathroom. I thought that if I kept the door shut, it would contain the smell at least a little bit. And I guess it did, at least at first. But as time went on, the smell just slowly crept its way into the room, and, little by little, completely overpowered it.
Now, the room smells like the chamber below an outhouse. I keep telling myself I’ll get used to it eventually, but it hasn’t happened yet. It’s just so strong, so overpowering. It’s festered itself in every corner of the room, to the point where I feel like I can taste it in the saltwater taffy.
My phone and computer are my only windows to the outside world, and a lot of their features don’t even work anymore. As I’ve said, I can’t seem to contact anyone using them, and while I can access google, I can’t see any kind of news article so I don’t know of anyone’s looking for me or not. The only social media site that seems to work is Reddit.
My devices still tell me the time and date, so I know that it’s been three days since my door locked itself permanently. I’m miserable every second, and I still don’t understand why or how this happened to me. I only have a few more days before I’ll run out of food or any sort of liquid.
I don’t understand what happened and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t want to die here, but unless I figure something out soon, I can’t deny that’s what will probably happen.
I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to close this. More than anything, I just want to know why. Why did this happen? Why did it have to happen to me, of all people? I’ve never heard of anything like this ever happening before. I desperately hope there’s a way to escape it, but it feels like I’ve already tried everything. The windows, the door, nothing is working. But I’m still trying, so desperately, to find a way out.
And if there isn’t one, I know I’ll have a long, painful death to look forward to.
