I remember all the details of the scariest night of my life. The night I would later be forced to relive over and over again. The moon’s light, especially bright that evening, illuminated my already pale skin. The raccoon that had lived inside the wall next to my bed for at least a month had been surprisingly quiet. The spider in the corner of my room had moved around five inches lower, but had not yet been labeled a direct threat.
The story begins exactly three hours before my 13th birthday, as I decided to commemorate the night by reading one of my favourite stories, Adam and Brenda. It was a tale of teenage romance, and I had just reached the age where things like that started to feel exciting.
For the first time in my life, I was alone in the house, with no nanny or sister to watch over me. My parents and my older sister, Amy, had left early in the morning to visit my grandma, who hadn’t been feeling well and had just completed her final round of chemotherapy the week before.
It was a long drive from our little coastal town in Wales to the outskirts of London, where my grandma used to live. Because of the painfully long journey, my parents decided to stay overnight in a hostel near her house.
I was supposed to join them for the seven-hour drive in our tiny Fiat 126, during the worst heatwave there had ever been. But that morning, I had a fever. In my 12-year-old mind, I felt incredibly lucky to be left alone, free to do my own thing for the entire evening, night, and even the next morning.

I planned it all carefully—reading Adam and Brenda was the top priority, followed by a marathon of fantasy movies.
Don’t make the dire mistake of thinking I didn’t have typical childish thoughts, though. I fully intended to raid the sweets cupboard (or at least challenge myself to eat as much of it as I could).
But due to the events I’m about to describe, all of my plans were, of course, nothing more than a child’s fantasy. And that child… was no more.

The clock in my room showed 11:55 p.m. when I first heard something that sounded like a scream or a loud squeak. At first, all that happened was my heart rate jumping from steady to what felt like three hundred beats a second. The first scream was brief, and it seemed like a creation of my tired mind. It didn’t feel real.
I thought maybe the raccoon had gotten hurt inside the wall, or a fox had trapped itself in the garden fence. I chose the raccoon theory, since it seemed the most obvious, and went back to my book.
Just as Brenda was about to kiss Adam for the very first time, in the most romantic setting at the top of the Empire State Building, I heard another scream.
This time, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. My mouth opened slightly, and my eyes scanned the room, just to be safe, even though the scream had clearly come from the garden. That time, I put Brenda’s story away. With my heart beating dangerously fast, I leaned toward the window.
At first glance, there was nothing to worry about. Nobody was outside, and no fox was caught in the fence posts. But after a while, I noticed something more sinister.
I saw that there was nothing outside.
I could see nothing.
Just a black void.
And I could feel something strange too. I could sense the vastness in front of me. I could almost tell how far away I was from the next material object. It felt like I was light years away from it. Could my perception really have become this distorted? My first thought was as normal as it could be in a situation as surreal as this: I’m going to call my parents.
I thought, despite what I felt, that everything I saw was nothing more than a construction of a seriously ill, fever-driven brain.
I stumbled downstairs, gripping tightly to the balustrade, with the light of the moon still shining through—even though there was no moon anymore. I grabbed the old Nokia we kept at home and called the last number on the list, which was, thankfully, my mother’s.
I felt a huge wave of relief when the phone rang. According to the scenario my sick brain had sold me, I wasn’t supposed to hear it ring. But there it was.
“Hello?” I heard my mum’s voice on the other end.
“Mum?! Oh… I’m really not feeling well. I thought… I’m hallucinating,” I said quietly, trying not to show how scared I was.
“Who is that? Jane, is that you? This isn’t funny. You know what stress can do to the baby?!”
“What baby? Mum, it’s me, Katie!”
My eyes stung, and a high-pitched ringing echoed in my ears. It was the kind of ringing that always came when I got really anxious.
“That’s not funny at all,” Mum said.
“Mum! Stop!” I screamed in horror. “I’m really scared!”
The silence that followed was literally painful. Every second felt like my heart might burst from my chest.
“Katie, right?”
“YES! Yes, Mum!” I sighed with relief.
“Katie… I think you’ve dialled the wrong number. I don’t have a daughter. I’m really sorry, but please don’t call again.”
“Mum!”
The line went dead.
Suddenly, I started to think that I was dead too.
As strange as it may sound now, I—a twelve-year-old—decided to check if I was actually dead or just crazy. I didn’t dare try to hurt myself to see if I could feel it. I wasn’t sure if, as a ghost, you could still feel things you did to yourself. Instead, I went for what seemed like a more logical solution. I decided to step out of the house.
I thought that if my mind was still lost, intoxicated by something I had breathed in or accidentally drunk, I would still be able to feel the ground beneath my feet, even if I couldn’t see it.
I opened the heavy front door and stood face to face with the darkness. Once again, I could sense the space around me. I couldn’t see anything out there, but I could feel… something. It was confusing to have that sensation. It was like I had become an animal: a dog, or some other creature that communicated through smell or instinct.
I closed my eyes, hoping to calm myself. I thought that not seeing anything might make it easier to feel normal once I felt the grass beneath my feet.

“You can do this,” I thought to myself before lifting one foot and taking a step.
I couldn’t feel anything there. I couldn’t.
I almost lost it, until I remembered that to enter the house, I always had to take a big step up because the ground was slightly lower than the foundation. With my eyes still closed, I pushed my body forward. A bit more. Then a bit more. And just a tiny bit more…
I lost my balance.
I lost it.
I tripped.
I stretched my arms out in front of me, but they didn’t touch anything. I opened my eyes only to see I was floating. Hundreds of feet away from the house I had just stood in seconds ago. It made no sense. Was I alive? Where was I? If I was in space, why could I breathe?
Suddenly, a shrill, high-pitched alarm rang out, painfully loud.
EEEEEEE. EEEEEEE. EEEEEEE.
That’s when I remembered that I’d heard it before.
I remembered something else too. I was still confused, but the answer was there, just out of reach—like it was at my fingertips.
All of a sudden, the space around me turned a vibrant shade of red. It was as if the entire universe had caught fire.
“Failure. Failure. Failure.” The text appeared in the void above my head.
“Subject report for Tube five hundred and fifty-five, PF5SS9. Simulation is faulty. Try again.” The voice echoed around me.
That was when I remembered everything.
The memories came flooding back like I was rewinding an old VHS tape. And because of that, I knew I had only a few seconds, maybe a minute, before the simulation would be corrected and restarted.
I decided to take my mind on a journey through the good memories I had just regained access to. I went back to the time before the day we landed on Earth.