It's funny how life refuses to play by its own rules sometimes. My good grades, my happy family, my bright future. Everything seemed to be looking up. You might even say that I spent the first seventeen years of my life doing everything right from the very beginning, and yet none of that is exactly helping me right now. A trip to the waterpark, one of those big indoor complexes, with the close-knit group of peers who I considered dear and true friends. How could anything possibly go wrong on such a perfect day?

Well, it's like I said. Life doesn't always play by its own rules, apparently. One minute, you're at the top, staring into the blackness of the enclosed waterslide stretching downwards assumedly into the pool beneath; the next, you're… still in there. Then the next, the same; and so on and so forth. In fact, it was so hard to judge time in the slide that eventually I didn’t even know if it’d been hours or days. I simply kept going down, no twists or turns, just a consistent incline stretching forever; illuminated only by the small porthole-like windows on either side through which all I could see was a blinding white light.

The outside seemed to be no more, replaced by that light; solid and all encompassing. And still, I slid, having actually almost fallen asleep at certain points, it'd been that long. It was during one of these lapses into shocked half-slumber that everything changed. When I opened my eyes, all was in darkness. I strained my neck and saw that the light-providing portholes were growing dimmer by the second until there was no illumination from the way I came either. What’s worse was that I seemed to be coming to a stop as the slide’s angle became increasingly horizontal until it was just a dry pitch-black tunnel.

An echoed rumbling festered in my eardrums, which I’d compare to an old generator, but big. Really big, and distant. Or maybe it more closely resembled deep cave ambience, but its consistency betrayed something mechanical in nature. Something manufactured, and perpetual.

Hand over hand, I crawled forward, stifling terrified whimpers all the way. I was convinced that there was something else in the tunnel with me. I knew it to be true when I heard its form collide with the bottom of the slide, and then its doglike pace; grunting, snarling. Giving chase. I began to crawl faster, emboldened by a blinding light ahead. The creature was getting closer, I could smell it over the growing stench of chlorine; all mangy and rotten. When finally, I flopped out of the tube like a beached fish, hyperventilating. I was back in the pool, but something was wrong. Everyone else was gone. They’re still gone, all these years later. I’m completely alone here. When I try to leave the pool, I’m greeted by another that’s almost the exact same. It’s a blue hellscape, and I’m floating in it. Forever.