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The automatic doors of the grocery store slid shut behind him with a soft whoosh. His arms were heavy with bags, filled with the essentials. The cold autumn air bit at his face, and he hunched his shoulders, pulling his jacket tighter around himself.
It had been a long day at work, the kind of day that made every hour drag by, each moment more tedious than the last. As he walked the familiar streets of his neighborhood, he sighed, already imagining his evening: a microwave dinner and a half-hearted attempt at binge-watching something mind-numbing.
But as he rounded the corner onto his usual street, something strange caught his eye. There, in the narrow alley between two old brick buildings, a soft, glowing light pulsed. He stopped, frowning. The alley had always been there, a forgotten space filled with trash cans and shadows, but this... this was different. The light flickered like a candle flame, but too steady, too bright.
"Probably some street light on the fritz," he muttered, though he couldn't tear his eyes away.
He should have kept walking. Any sensible person would. But the day had been so ordinary, so painfully predictable, that something inside him stirred—a curiosity, a need for something out of the routine.
Before he knew it, his feet were carrying him toward the alley.
The air grew colder as he stepped into the shadows between the buildings, the city noise fading into a strange, muffled silence. The glow intensified the closer he got, until it filled the narrow space, casting strange, wavering patterns on the brick walls. His breath caught in his throat. The light wasn't coming from a street lamp at all. It seemed to hover in mid-air, swirling in a spiral of gold and white, like a door just waiting to be opened.
"What the..."
Instinct told him to turn back, but something stronger—the same curiosity that had brought him here—kept him moving forward. The bags in his hands felt heavier now, as if weighed down by more than just groceries. He reached out, his fingers trembling, and touched the edge of the light.
In an instant, the world tilted.
His stomach lurched as if he'd stepped off the edge of a cliff. The alley, the city, everything he knew was gone, swallowed by the swirling light. His feet left the ground, and he was pulled forward, weightless, tumbling through a tunnel of glowing color. The bags slipped from his hands, but he didn't feel them fall.
Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over.
He hit the ground hard, gasping as the air was knocked out of him. For a moment, he just lay there, stunned, his heart pounding in his chest. The ground beneath him was cold, damp... and soft? Grass. He sat up, blinking in the dimness.
It was night. The sky above him was vast, a deep indigo canvas dotted with strange, unfamiliar stars. A crescent moon hung low on the horizon, larger and more luminous than any moon he'd ever seen. The air smelled different here, fresher, but with a strange, earthy undertone that he couldn't place.
This wasn't the alley. This wasn't his street.
He was somewhere else entirely.
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