It was an old chair. It sat in the corner of the room, weathered and scarred, with a dark wood frame that looked like it had been gnawed at by time. The back was slightly slanted, as if worn by someone who had spent too long hunched over it. The seat, a faded patchwork of upholstery, had begun to sag, its stuffing poking through in places. It was not the sort of chair one would notice at first. But those who did, never forgot it.
Darren had always been skeptical of rumors. Stories like the one about the chair had always seemed like nonsense to him. The people in town whispered about it, said it was cursed, that whoever sat in it would be driven mad. Most dismissed it as just an old story, something to spook kids. But there was something about this chair. Something that didn't sit right, even in the face of disbelief.
He had been walking by that house for days, the one on the edge of town that no one dared approach. The windows were boarded up, the front door cracked open just enough to see the chair resting in the dim light of the hallway. Darren couldn't help it. Something pulled him inside.
The house smelled like dust and mildew, with the scent of old wood and rotting cloth hanging in the air. The floorboards creaked under his boots, and the walls, cracked and peeling, seemed to close in on him as he moved toward the chair. He paused at the entrance, staring at it. The chair seemed to call to him, though he couldn't explain how.
It wasn't until his feet moved on their own that he realized he had stepped into the room. He didn't know why he couldn't turn back, but every step felt like it was taking him deeper into the house. It wasn't until he was standing in front of the chair that he realized how wrong everything felt. The dim light from the window seemed to concentrate on it, casting shadows across its faded upholstery.
He tried to leave, but his body refused to obey. It wasn't that he didn't want to escape—it was as if something was holding him in place, a force pushing him forward. His legs bent without his consent, bringing him closer to the chair. He felt like he was in a trance, each step more deliberate than the last, until he was sitting in the chair itself.
The moment his body made contact with it, the room seemed to darken. The air thickened, pressing down on him, suffocating him with an unseen weight. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Panic rose inside him, a wave that crashed against the side of his mind, but there was nothing he could do. He couldn't move, couldn't stand up, couldn't break free.
Then, the chair spoke. The voice was not a sound, but a whisper in the back of his skull, something that didn't belong to him but seemed to originate from the deepest parts of his mind.
"Stay," it said. And Darren knew, with absolute certainty, that he could never leave.
At first, it was small things. Flickers in his peripheral vision, brief moments when the room around him seemed to shift. He thought it was his eyes playing tricks on him, but it wasn't long before the hallucinations began.
A flicker of movement—just a person, standing in the doorway. But no one was there when he turned his head.
A soft noise—a whisper. The kind you hear when you're almost asleep, but it was too loud. Too real.
And then the chair spoke again, only this time, the voice was different. It was deeper, darker, and full of malice.
"Look at them," it whispered. "They are all around you."
The room shifted again, and Darren blinked, his mind scrambling to comprehend what he saw. The walls seemed to melt away, and the doorway wasn't empty anymore. Faces appeared, twisted and distorted, staring at him with hollow eyes. They seemed to be waiting for something, for him, for the chair. Their mouths opened, but no sound came out. It was like they were screaming without voices.
Darren's heart thudded painfully in his chest as the faces began to move, drawing closer, reaching out with skeletal hands. He wanted to scream, to fight, to run—but his body was frozen, locked into the chair. His arms were useless, heavy, as though they had been replaced with stone. His legs, too, were cemented into place. The chair had him, and there was no escape.
The whisper came again, quieter this time, as though the chair was savoring his fear.
"You think you can escape me?" it asked. "I will show you the world as it should be."
Suddenly, the hallucinations twisted again. The faces melted away, replaced by a new scene. The room dissolved, leaving Darren in a place he didn't recognize—a city street, lined with buildings that loomed like sentinels, casting long shadows across the pavement. People walked by, oblivious to him, their faces blank, their eyes empty. They seemed to be in some sort of trance, just like him.
He tried to move, but his body was still immobile. His mind screamed, but he couldn't find his voice. A chill ran down his spine as the figures around him began to gather, walking toward him, as though they knew exactly what he was thinking. They reached out, hands grasping for him.
The chair's voice returned, louder this time, resonating deep within his skull.
"Let them have you," it hissed. "You will be part of the greater whole. You will never be alone again."
Darren's body was no longer his. It felt like someone else was controlling it, manipulating it like a puppet. His arms were pulled up, his hands extended toward the crowd that now surrounded him. They weren't human anymore. Their faces were hollow, their eyes black pits. They grabbed him, pulling him toward them, their grip unrelenting. And yet, he couldn't move.
"You are one of us now," the chair whispered again, its voice twisted and hungry. "There is no escape."
The faces of the crowd distorted even further, their eyes stretching wider, their mouths opening impossibly wide, like they were going to devour him whole. And Darren understood, finally. This was what the chair had been preparing him for.
He was part of it now.
The world around him warped and bled, as the people became more monstrous. Their bodies shifted, growing larger, their skin splitting open to reveal gnarled, rotting flesh beneath. Darren screamed, but there was no sound, only the horrid sight of these things closing in on him. The world he had known, everything that had been real to him, no longer existed. It had been replaced by the chair's influence, the chair's hunger.
His mind cracked. It broke under the pressure of what was happening to him. He tried to scream again, but only the hollow echo of his own voice remained, trapped inside his skull.
The last thing Darren saw before everything faded completely was the chair. It was still there, sitting in the corner of the room, waiting for the next person to come along. Waiting for them to sit. And once they did, it would begin again.