Exit is just a suggestion

Trigger Warnings: Psychological distress, claustrophobia, existential dread.

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I remember the door was the first thing I noticed—its polished metal surface cold under my fingertips, its frame too narrow to be a real exit, and the faint hum of machinery beyond it. It was locked, but not in the way doors usually are. This was a door that whispered, You can leave… but why would you?

The room I was in was small. Sterile. Whitewashed walls with the faintest sheen of moisture clinging to the corners, as if the space itself was exhaling a slow, exhausted breath. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic, or maybe despair. I couldn’t tell.

I sat on the floor, my back pressed against the wall, knees drawn up like a child’s. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been there. Hours? Days? Time was a collapsing tunnel here, twisting so that seconds felt like lifetimes and lifetimes like seconds. My mind was a cracked mirror reflecting fragments of memories I could no longer piece together.

I tried to remember why I was here. Tried to summon a clear thought, but it always slipped away like smoke through fingers.

The door beckoned.

I pressed my palm against it again, feeling a pulse beneath the metal, slow and steady—like the heartbeat of a beast sleeping just beyond.

It was then the whispers started.

Soft. Indistinct. Voices speaking words I almost understood, like a dream in a language forgotten.

Exit is just a suggestion… exit is just a suggestion…

I shook my head, trying to will them away. But the voices multiplied, echoing off the sterile walls, circling in my skull like vultures over a carcass.

I closed my eyes.

The memories came crashing back, one by one.

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There was a hospital bed. The sterile smell of hospital air. A face, so close, so blurred—my own? Someone else’s?

I remember a man. A doctor. His eyes were sharp, but tired. He spoke softly, but his words burned into me.

“You’re stuck. In here. Your mind isn’t just breaking—it’s fracturing. Every time you try to leave, the door closes tighter. You have to find the exit inside first.”

Inside? How do you find an exit inside?

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The room began to warp.

Walls bent like wet paper. The floor rippled beneath me like a pond disturbed by invisible stones. My breath came in ragged gasps.

I screamed, but the sound was swallowed by the thick air.

I ran my fingers over the wall. There was texture—rough, uneven. Paint peeling in a pattern that looked almost like letters.

“Look within.”

I banged on the door. No response.

The whispers became louder. I couldn’t tell if they were guiding me or mocking me.

I sat back against the wall, defeated.

Then I saw it.

A crack.

No bigger than a hairline, but it glowed faintly.

I pressed my eye to it.

Beyond was darkness. Endless, silent, suffocating.

And then a flicker of light.

A staircase.

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Hope surged. I stood, heart pounding. I rushed to the crack, trying to widen it.

But the room fought back.

The walls pulsated, constricted. The floor trembled beneath me like a beast waking from slumber.

The door swung open.

A figure stood there.

Not a man. Not a woman. Something… shifting.

Its face was a mirror reflecting my own fear.

“Exit is a suggestion,” it whispered, voice like dry leaves scraping glass. “You can run. But you cannot leave.”

I wanted to scream. To fight.

But my legs wouldn’t move.

The figure stepped closer.

“Your mind is the prison. The room is a shadow of your own making.”

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I fell to my knees, sobbing.

Why? I thought. Why am I trapped here?

Suddenly, I remembered.

The accident.

The crash.

The burning metal.

The searing pain.

I’d died.

But not fully.

My mind refused to let go.

This room was my purgatory, built from shards of memory, regret, and fear.

I understood now.

The exit wasn’t outside.

It was inside me.

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I closed my eyes, searching for the staircase again.

This time, it was real.

Not outside the door, but inside my mind.

I had to face it.

The memories, the pain, the grief.

I had to forgive myself.

To let go.

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I pictured the fire that consumed me.

The faces I loved and left behind.

The apologies I never said.

I whispered them now, into the silence.

“I'm sorry. I forgive you. I forgive me.”

The walls softened.

The air warmed.

The whispers faded.

The door swung wide.

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I stepped through.

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And I woke up.

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But I carry the echo of that room.

The endless corridors of my own mind.

A reminder that sometimes, the hardest exit is the one within ourselves.

Because sometimes, exit is just a suggestion.

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Author’s Note:

This story explores the delicate boundaries between life and death, sanity and madness, confinement and freedom. Sometimes our prisons aren’t made of steel or walls but memories and regrets. And the path to escape is never just a door—it’s a journey inside ourselves.

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