Backrooms Decrypted: The Infinite Apartment
The Infinite Apartment is another name for The Backrooms Level 13. It has a CLASS 2 survival difficulty rating. It is SECURE, UNSAFE, and has a LOW ENTITY COUNT. Level 13 appears to be an apartment complex with an unusually large number of storeys. There are several little houses on each floor, each with a number on the door. The stairways positioned on each floor serve as the primary mode of mobility between floors on the level. Because Elevators only carry you to other levels and do not move you through Level 13, they are the primary mode of intra-level transportation.
By InfoPublished 3 years ago • 6 min read
The Infinite Apartment (Level 13) 🌇🔪🩸
- You awaken, feeling carpet against your cheek. The strange, slightly out-of-date pattern you've come to expect from the Backrooms. What is that peculiar sound you can hear? This oddly tuneless easy-listening music is the kind you might find in an elevator, whisking you away to another world. Muzak that feels like it was written by a committee of mosquitoes as you stand, you see the similarly strange patterns on the wallpaper. This place never left the seventies, did it? Still, you'll take it over some limitless wilderness. It's time to figure out where you are and how you got here. You rise to your feet and begin to assess the environment around you. It seems as though you're in some kind of lobby, lined with elevators on both sides and marked entrances to stairways around the back.
- Near the entrances to the stairways, there's a large front desk with an impossibly thick guestbook sitting on it. Behind the desk, there's a single adult Faceling in a classy gray suit. Presumably, you think to yourself, this is the building manager. You recognize this place, at least in essence. It's much nicer than the hideous, rundown apartment building that you used to live in, but it's clearly an apartment building nonetheless. Very clever, Explorer. You really are learning from your time here, aren't you? If we were there, we'd offer you a shiny golden sticker, but seeing as we're just a disembodied voice, a warm welcome will have to suffice as your reward.
- Welcome to Level 13, Explorer the Infinite Apartment we do hope you find it nice and cozy. Your mind briefly bristles at the thought of the number. As much as it feels ridiculous to admit in a place like this, you've always been the superstitious type. You avoided letting black cats cross your path; you never spilled salt or walked under ladders; but above all, you avoided the number 13 at any cost. It made you thoroughly uncomfortable for reasons you never even understood. Just because of the numerical association, you get the sense that something evil is waiting for you on this level—a kind of evil that you haven't encountered before, even down here in the backrooms.
- Suddenly, you remember how you got here. It wasn't even your choice. You were in the previous level, the blank white room, when you suddenly just jumped through the floor. And now you're here, with a sense of vague dread gnawing at your guts. Wonderful. Isn't the backroom full of the most delightful surprises? You better get moving before something finds you. Because, believe us, in the backrooms, something is always looking. You decide to avoid the elevators. After all, you can't trust windows here, so why would you trust a small, metal box that traps you inside for the duration of your trip? Those things are unsafe enough in the real world.
- You imagine that if you stepped inside one of them in the backrooms, the chamber would suddenly fill with digestive juices and dissolve you into nothingness. No thank you. You're going to get some exercise and take the stairs instead. However, you aren't prepared for just how many sets of stairs there are. It's an iron staircase that just keeps going up, floor after floor after floor. Of course, this was probably to be expected. Nothing happens in the Backrooms for an extended period of time or space; why should this apartment building be any different? Your best bet is probably to pick a floor at random and go exploring, hoping to find some answers, some goodies, or maybe even some fellow human beings.
- We're glad that you didn't notice that the floor you happened to choose is floor 13. Chance has a sense of humor. The floor is furnished in a similar fashion to the lobby. Ugly carpets and patterned wallpaper. A kind of stale smell is lingering in the air. Something about it, like much of The Backrooms, feels a little off. You decide to draw your trusty revolver, the one that's done a decent job of keeping you alive all this time. You're preparing for something dangerous to appear around the corner of the long, door-lined hallway. So when that exact scenario plays out, you feel oddly vindicated. There's a low, guttural snarl as a hound rounds the corner, its face twisted in animal malice.
- It's the first time you've gotten a sense of emotion from a hound; beyond just the animalistic hunger that drives most of the monsters here. This creature hates you, and it wants you dead. So if you want to survive, you're going to need to make it dead first. The hound charges and you level your revolver. No more running. That's not who you are anymore. You draw a bead on the monster and open fire as it gets closer and closer. Six loud, staccato booms followed, filling the hound with holes and dropping it to the ground. It lets out a rattling wheeze and dies. That, undeniably, felt good. You're not just prey here anymore. You're a contender. Almost any entity is as likely to be killed by you in a fair fight as you are to be killed by it.
- In other words, you've come a long way, kid. Well done. But, as much as we would absolutely hate to taint the warm glow of your victory, it is important to know that all your actions do have consequences. For example, firing off six shots in the enclosed hallways of an infinite apartment building will, no doubt, attract plenty of attention. That's when you hear that terrible, distant rumbling, getting louder and closer by the moment. You sigh and begin to wonder whether that single moment of badassery was really worth the trouble you're about to deal with. The backroom certainly knows how to put you in your place. The rumbling is almost deafening, but suddenly, you turn around and see its source.
- An absolute avalanche of clumps come rumbling around the corner behind you, and you give chase. You immediately begin to run as the nasty, fleshy rumbling noises get closer behind you. The Clumps are hot on your heels. You can feel all their grasping hands, yearning to get ahold of you. Suddenly, going all Dirty Harry on that hound doesn't seem like such a cool idea. But really, now isn't the time to beat yourself up. You just keep running; leave the deprecation to us. You turn a corner into another seemingly identical hallway, where the only option is to keep running because the pack of Clumps behind you clearly isn't slowing down. You're beginning to feel that strain in your legs.
- Your lungs feel like they're pumping acid, but you can't stop. The last thing you want is to be devoured by Crumps in some drab apartment hallway. When you do bite it, you at least want it to be a more exciting demise, right? But we can't always choose how we go out. Sometimes, a crowd of about forty vicious Clumps decides how we go out, and they rarely dish out glamorous dooms. All the horrifying entities you've faced—all to die from these malformed wads of limbs how embarrassing. You find an extra reserve of energy within you and surge forward, sprinting down the hallway at speeds you once would have thought impossible, putting genuine distance between you and the Clump collective behind you.
- Pure survival instinct. You even begin to entertain the idea that you might survive this one, until your foot catches on a snag in the carpet and you fall on your face like a complete tool, while a horde of death quickly approaches behind you. This really isn't how you wanted to spend today, is it? As you force your eyes closed and prepare for death, you hear a door click open next to you.
About the Creator
If You Love Me, You'll Do It
I met Jason when I was five years old. I could say that I loved him from the moment I saw him. He was so handsome to me and I felt in awe by his presence. When they introduced him as the new kid in school, I wanted to be his friend right away. I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember his smile and how he didn't seem shy. He appeared confident and ready to learn. I waved at him and said "hello," before anyone else could even say a word. He sat next to me, and I asked him if he wanted to be friends. He looked so happy as he said, "Yes!"
By Sidney Smith (Sid Smith)8 days ago in Fiction
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