Darkness. Pitch black , and enveloping emptiness that folds in on itself. The void rasterizing and turning into the pixeled mosaic of a LCD screen. The pixels turn into squares, and the squares turn into grids and lines unfurl and form a house.

 

      When I became conscious, I was lying on a small bed. The covers were an gross shade of yellow and the material felt itchy and scratchy against my skin. My body ached from sleeping as stood up. I was in what appeared to be a child’s room, I surmised from the scattering of colourful decals and stickers of cute animals and animated cartoons; adorning the walls and cupboards. But somehow the room was emitting a feeling of incredible unrest. The off white wallpaper was moldy and peeling off, the aforementioned stickers ripped and torn. The air smelled stagnant and of rot like something has died long ago but had already decomposed and vanished from existence leaving only behind its ghost of a scent.

 

      This was not my room, infact after exiting the room I found myself in a long hallway adorned with the same horrible off-white wallpaper.Under the flickering fluorescent yellow ceiling light I became even more more convinced that I was not where I should be.  

 

      Going downstairs I see the rest of the house im in decorated in a similar ilk, all beige walls and dusty furniture. The air was still and quiet , with dust particles so big I could see them swirling around the air like snow. It looked like a house that had been abandoned to time and yet was not allowing itself to completely rot away. No one was had been here for a very long time. 

 

     At the front of the living room I located what I guessed was the front door. It felt familiar the way my finges gripped around the handle like it was the handshake of an old old friend. I opened the door.

 

         My senses were assaulted by a barrage of bright colours. Postercolor blues, greens and reds straight out of a lego set or a kids children book. When my eyes adjusted to the menagerie of colours I realised what lay before was definitely not what I expected. 

 

      What I saw was a culdesac, with sprawling bright green grass and cookie cutter houses dotted around. Unlike the muted color palette of the house I came from these houses were all brightly coloured with gaudy designs and clashing colours on their walls. Each houses was an exact copy of the other, differing only in colours. It felt like I was in a dream. 

 

      However, the odd stillness in the air still permeated my bones as I walked out into the overly bright neon hue of the sun. I heard no sounds of human life; no cars rumbling ,no tv running and no children shouting and playing. It was just eerie quiet.

 

      I walked across the expansive lawn cringing as my feet crushed the oddly fake sounding neon green grass, until I reached the next cookie-cutter house. As the house came closer and clearer in my vision , a non humanoid figure came into view. 

 

       An purple elephant-like character dressed in human clothes stood sentry by the front door. It looked like something out of animated kids show, with quite colourful animal friends talking about numbers or something. But this creature had been plucked out of an old glitchy tv and into reality, its large cartoon eyes bulging and unblinking like a insects. Its bright purple skin veiny and oddly cracked. 

 

      The way it looked forward at the street  a wry smile scrawled across its , motionlessly sent a deep shiver down my spine. Backtracking and looking closer at the entrances of the other houses reveal that similarly designed characters of different animals stood guard before their subsequent houses. Just like the elephant they all looked forward with stretched open eyes , wordlessly smiling.

 

      Terrified, I started to back away slowly as sweat started beading on my forehead and tickled down my neck. CRACK, MY heart leaped into my throat and thumped loudly in my ears as I felt my foot crunch the spine of a twig on the ground. WIth frightening speed, the elephants head turned to me its expression unchanged, its large black pupils trained on me. 

 

      My legs melted to the ground as I collapsed on the grass. I felt my body completely surrender immediately to fear as the creature lumbered closer and closer until it was just a few feet in front of me. Its huge body blocked out the neon-bright sun as it peered down at me. 

 

      Its face muscles twisted and twitched as they changed and moves, as if they were rusted cogs in a long abandoned machine finally moving for the first time in forever. Screeching noises croaks outs its mouth as its voicebox tries to start, 

 

      “-Y-y-y-Ou- , who a-re YoU”, the voice crackles and I swear I started hyperventilating. Just as white stars started to dot my vision, the creature continued, “ It-you are you are , Sia aren’t you?”. The fact that this creature knew my childhood nickname, triggered a new layer of fear to wash over my blanketing me with horror. 

 

      “How do you…know my name?”, I managed to whispered out when my voice had finally found its footing again. “It is!, It is Sia! Howdy Neighbour!, I haven’t seen you in forever”, Its voice boomed, its smile extending impossible far up its face. “Where have you been?” , for a moment the joy in its huge eyes disappeared and was replaced with almost an accusatory look, but just as quickly as it came it dissipated like smoke. 

 

      “No no no”, it shook its huge head in denial , “ You must have been busy it must have been hard wasn’t it Sia” it hushed with the tone of a loving mother. It raised its huge hand to ruffle my hair and couldnt’t help but feel an odd sense of pity for the weird creature. Before I ever had a chance to say anything, I was dragged to my feet by an incredible force. 

 

        “ I have so much to tell you Sia! You simply must come in for tea!”, it chirped as it dragged me into its house. The interior of the house was almost identical to the one that I woke up in.  Except the pasty yellow was replaced by an almostly sickly pale purple. I resisted the urge to sneeze when I walked in as a waze of dust attacked my senses. A thin layer of lint and grime covered every surface; table and chair with fuzzy debris. And as the large elephant sat me down onto the living room sofa , every step seemed to just kick up more dirt and dust. 

 

      The elephant left me in the living room as he hobbled off , presumably to make “tea”. After waiting a few extra seconds for security I sought out to try and find a way to escape this childish hellscape. I slid out of the living room and into the main hallway, where a staircase to the upper levels stood. Faced with no better option that siting and waiting I decided to try my luck upstairs.  Along the walls were photos of the same animated elephant and other colourful creatures posing in front of different houses that I could recognise from the culdesac, and amenities like what seems to be a children’s play park and a swimming pool. All of these pictures had one single commonality , amoughts the boisterous smiling characters is a small child that is frolicking and laughing along with them.

 

      Somehow, no matter how hard I squinted and stared at the child’s face I could not make any recognisable features, or any features for that fact. In every photograph their face looked blurred and obscured , almost like they moved too quickly to capture . Like a ghost surrounded by people. I shrugged off my unease and kept climbing upwards.

 

       Upstairs I was greeted with a series of closed doors each covered with their own layer of age. I didn’t have time to look through each room, who knows when the monster downstairs was done with the kitchen. I shuddered at the thought of what could happen when the huge purple creature turned around to discover that I was no longer there. I was just about to randomly pick the nearest door when I noticed something familiar out of the corner of my eye. 

 

         It was a splattering of crooked letters painted pastel colours, hangly loosely on an oak door. The words Sia’s room carved and etched its way into my eyes. There was no mistaking it , this was my childhood room, it evem had the rudely drawn crayon stars staining the wood varnish at the corners of the handle. A remnant of my over active mind. I open the door.

 

       No words could be used to describe the feeling =that washed over me as I walked into the room. Every spec of dust ,every alphabet letter block was in its place. It was like a room stuck in time, the princess bedsheets looked plush and freshly steamed . My stuffys all piled over each other, love evident in their well worn sides. I felt at home, which was weird because this definitely wasnt my home and I hadn’t even been in my childhood bedroom in what must have been years.

 

       I squatted down on the plush ladybug carpet and relished in the way the dusty yarn tickled my palms. I was just absentmindedly sorting through the scattered children books on the floor, when I noticed a colourful rectangular shaped object under the bed. 

 

       Reaching down into the dark recesses of the bed I aimlessly grasped at the lint and air until my fingers came into contact with a hard plastic edge. Out came out an old game cartridge about the size of my palm. The label was faded and old but it undeniable. I recognised the cute animal villages huddled together holding up the sign ; “ Rainbow Valley”. 

 

       A tidal way of cold icy memories washed over me as knowledge of the game came to the forefront of my mind; a cute little village building simulator where players can create their own town and fill it with animal villagers. This game was my hold childhood. I spect hours every day talking to each of my villagers , making my town as adorable as possible , allowing me to forget the darkness of the world outside my little room. 

 

       The cul-de-sac , the ugly coloured houses were exactly as I left them. Ugly to me now as an adult but as a child I thought they were the pinnical of design.  But now… these houses, these animals were real and right in front of me. Like I had never left, like time just stood in limbo waiting for my return keeping its residents in a state of constant hell. I wanted to vomit.