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⚠️ Content Warnings ⤴
Info
Original concept and article written by Reddit user u/Nerdykiddo4844. Rewritten by Praetor3005 and
Nikuchan .
Big thanks to Abdallah Amr for the fading block css!
Thanks to Spectre48 and
Sky3 for the generel thoughts as well!
Both music tracks have been made by the awesome music composer Dapper Husky. Make sure to check his youtube channel! He made a lot of great OSTs for the Backrooms.
Glossary:
- Huvvat - Post-corruption Lost name for the Hive
- Mundus - Lost name for the Blue Channel, and everything within it
- Nihil - Lost name for the Grave
- Paradeos - Pre-corruption Lost name for the Hive
Chapter 1 - The Faithful
The rot.
That was the first sensation Justin felt as he exited the dark labyrinth of the Cave System, stepping into the Hive for the first time in years of exploring the Backrooms. The surrounding smell wasn't only a curse for the nose. Like a malevolent wind, the stench irritated his eyes and skin, even leaving a rancid aftertaste in his mouth.
Justin had hoped the groups of old were wrong. He had hoped all these stories about the flesh hell were all but superstitions. He had hoped Leo, out of all people, could be mistaken for once.
Yet the overseer now had to accept what the level really was; A rotting corpse, whose impossible structure only strengthened the uncanniness of the biological nightmare it was representing. A realm that was never meant to die, one that still pulsated with a wicked, anomalous energy.
The Lost described it as a threshold between body and mind, yet Justin could only see an unholy fusion of life and death.
Perhaps the M.E.G. had been right to keep The Lost's barricade leading here from Level 8. Perhaps he made a mistake by disobeying his sister's pleas to stop this aimless, nonsensical journey.
The overseer kept walking with difficulty, unused to such rough terrain. Albeit with infinite size, his Worn Sack felt heavier with each step, as if its content wanted to get out.
This bag wasn't designed for corpses, after all.
Despite its usefulness, Justin didn't bother bringing in any additional equipment, a decision he was already starting to regret. Reading so many Lost-related articles made him forget about the more recent dangers noted about this place.
His blind optimism yet again got the better of him, making the overseer dismiss these stories.
He sighed, walking with difficulty across the putrid fields, trying not to fall onto the fleshy floor. He knew Kat was most certainly raging at his decision to sneak out right now. Perhaps she would come here with the entire Compass Point team to try to get him back.
She had known about his plan for a while, after all.
Even the pleas of his sister failed in convincing him to let the love of his life down. The documents of old were correct; he knew it deep down. Despite whatever change occurred, these stories kept the glimmer of hope ablaze inside him.
Despite how barren the place became, there was still a possibility its link with the Grave remained, a point of passage for souls to reincarnate in this endless nursery.
An unexpected slip made Justin come back to reality. Barely managing to stand up, the overseer noticed the floor moving.
No, breathing.
Justin wrinkled his eyes. The whole floor was pulsating, from huge veins to what looked like organs, all growing and contracting. None of them looked remotely useful, bringing blood to more veins that felt like they were going nowhere.
Despite its "natural" look, this was still the Backrooms. For a moment, Justin almost had forgotten how strange this whole situation was. A rotten carcass as a level wasn't that surprising to him at this point, but one still moving was something else.
There was no concrete, no landmark, not even any rocky formation. This entire place was biologically unsettling. The overseer wasn’t a stranger to brutalist spaces, artificial worlds without sense that slowly broke the minds of the people expecting logic, yet there was something different about walking around in a liminal body. The flesh squelched under his feet, sometimes spurting out blood on his pants and shoes. The ceiling regularly ejected fragments of guts he had to avoid, as if this whole place was constantly replacing itself, barely holding itself together. The whole environment felt wrong. Not because it was too man-made, but because it looked far too natural.
Despite how much he was trying to ignore the gruesome features, his senses were so overwhelmed the overseer struggled to even keep up.
This place wasn't without familiarities, however. Various no-clipping spots could be discerned around him, probably leading to either deeper parts of the Hive or other levels entirely. These were more likely what entities used to escape this place to torment humanity with their own liminal, threatening echo.
Backborn legends told tales about this place for many centuries, with the occasional traveler barely escaping this place, telling stories about hordes of monstrous creatures chasing them for miles. The overseer sighed, wishing he had paid more attention to what he thought were misguided stories, merely used to scare off children.
Overlooking whatever change the Hive went through might cost him his life.
Justin gulped, adjusting the bag on his back. One step after the other, the overseer kept walking, dreading the thought of encountering something that both lived and moved.
He must stay hopeful, for Olivia and himself.
. . .
As Justin kept progressing within the flesh plains of the Hive, eggs started to feature more and more on the walls and pillars scattered around.
These unholy incubators weren't the only thing getting more common around the overseer. Various entities started showing around, roaming from the distance as if they were looking for their own purpose. While few and far between, their presence in such an open area made Justin struggle to stay out of their sight, often relying on hiding behind a flesh mass or an egg in order to avoid confrontation.
His lack of preparation didn’t make it any easier. The overseer was struggling to even stand up, the floor pulsating so randomly he couldn't make out any pattern. The Hive felt disturbed but still peaceful enough to let Justin walk around relatively safely.
It knew he wasn't supposed to be here, yet it let it unfold.
This place definitely threw away any sense of logic, even by Backrooms standards.
Curiosity got the better of Justin, making him approach yet another batch to study them in more detail. Some looked unbroken, allowing him to see shapes growing through their translucent shell. Justin took a step away, recognizing them just enough to be confused about their biology. These were entities; this was undeniable, but they looked twisted, incomplete, and almost unnatural, whatever this could mean within the Backrooms.
The overseer could recognize one of them as a Hound fetus, but most of them were unlike anything he'd seen before, the shapes forming something unique and unreal, but threatening nonetheless.
This whole spectacle made Justin grow uneasy. Archivists described most of these entities as mammals, yet here they were, floating within eggs the size of a human, as if they were in stasis. Their scent wasn't any sweeter than anything else here; the scent of rotten fish made his nose twitch in disgust.
As he kept inspecting them, Justin almost let out a scream when he saw what looked like a human fetus within one of the eggs. Covering his mouth, the overseer approached it. Its absence of face features made its nature clear. Despite the distasteful situation, he smiled. The scriptures were right. This place was a birthing pod, although the nature of the born species wasn't important for now.
Whether its properties could still be used by humans was the real question.
Distant howlings pierced the silence of the hive, making Justin jump in surprise, almost dropping onto the floor.
A pack of Hounds just spotted him from the other side of the plains.
Coming back to his senses, the overseer started to run. To his horror, however, the uneven floor, coupled with the heavy charge he was lifting, severely slowed him down.
The pack was closing up quickly.
His heart pumping harder and harder, Justin looked around, desperately trying to find a hiding spot. Yet, now that he was spotted, there was no way for him to lose them so easily.
The vicious growling painfully brought back memories from deep within his mind. That fateful day when Melody Parker brought back Olivia's death, also ambushed by Hounds, just like Tournesol before her.
Justin tried to keep his breathing in check. He couldn’t let Olivia die a second time. Still looking around, he discerned something off about the huge rotten wall in front of him. Much like some surfaces he saw earlier, this one looked out of place, darker and unmoving.
A no-clipping spot.
The overseer closed his eyes, concentrating on the fleshy lining. This was his only chance to lose them. He took a deep breath and kept his eyes closed before running towards the rotten surface.
He felt the cold embrace of the organs penetrating his body— no, fusing with it for an instant.
The rot was unbearable. The smell of centuries of carrion penetrated his nostrils. Justin repressed a scream, fearing the flesh would enter his mouth.
Then in an instant, it was gone. Justin collapsed onto the soft floor, Olivia’s corpse falling from his back. Feeling the muscles below him contract and the veins pulsate, the overseer quickly jumped in disgust, screaming, before finally puking.
Justin remembered how much he disliked the endless daylight on Level 11, the sun reflecting onto the tarmac and the concrete to create an unholy heat at all times of the year. Yet, right now, he missed the Infinite City. He missed the artificial so much.
Struggling to stay up, he looked at the bag in front of him, now covered in fluids and guts he did not wish to identify. Glancing at himself, he realized he also was covered in whatever biological parts the Hive was made of.
More than ever, Justin wished he had taken his time before coming here. The absence of spare clothes would haunt him for the rest of the trip.
Or forever, if he stumbled upon yet another pack of entities without any way to escape.
The floor seemed calmer, pulsating less than a few minutes ago. Whether this was due to the different area he was in or the Hive having found enough entertainment in the chase was a question he did not wish to ask himself.
Taking back his worn sack, Justin resorted to walking, or at least staggering, trying to find an empty egg as soon as possible, this time paying more attention to the surrounding dangers than ever.
. . .
After what felt like hours, the overseer finally witnessed the form he was looking for. In front of him, a few meters away, lay a gigantic open egg, wide enough to hold a human body. Despite its content being long gone, the flesh coffin smelled horrible, its putrid form almost melting away.
To the overseer's own surprised, the imposing egg remnant drew him forward slowly. His limbs moved on their own, slowly walking forward. Finally, near the gruesome incubator, Justin let down his worn sack, opening it, before slowly taking its content away.
Shaking, the overseer was now looking at Olivia's corpse lying in his arms.
The smell of the body was surprisingly tame for one that had been dead for months. If Justin didn't have to handle it back in Base Alpha, he would have thought the Hive's scent was the one hiding her own.
The look of the body was equally as well-preserved, something no one in the M.E.G. managed to find an explanation for. Roses had grown around her where the botanist died and haven't withered ever since.
Rather ironic, given her family name.
Justin kept shaking, still unused to the sight of the love of his life gone by. Getting the body was not the hard part. Compass Point quickly found her remnants months ago, when she left Base Alpha for the last time, following an argument with the overseer.
Rather, the esoteric process was what Justin was fearing. Leo remained unclear about how the threshold between the soul and the physical realm worked, whether by choice or by lack of knowledge. Unfortunately, this meant Justin would have to improvise, something he had gradually come to hate as he led the M.E.G. against many disasters. The phenomenon exploited by the Lost, like everything else in the Backrooms, remained unclear and mysterious.
Despite his lack of information about how and why the Hive shifted form, he had to keep the glimmer of hope ablaze.
Justin slowly stood up before gently placing Olivia against the surface of the egg's exterior. Immediately, the viscous shell started to fuse with her skin, slowly absorbing the body as the cracked surface of the egg repaired itself.
Justin moved away, briefly panicking.
Was he doing the right thing?
For a second, the overseer considered breaking the egg to try to find another solution. Before he could make any move, however, it began pulsating loudly, taking him off guard.
The Hive was unhappy; Justin could feel it. Angered, it started shaking intensely, almost matching the pulsations of the egg. The overseer held onto the nearby wall, not without disgust, some debris collapsing from the fleshy ceiling. Movement could be perceived from inside the egg, although the falling bones quickly made him understand he shouldn't come close.
The Hive groaned and agitated itself for several agonizing minutes, as if it had torn apart a part of itself. Justin's anxiety grew as he realized what mess he may have just started.
This place was rotten, but it was still very much alive. If the link between the Grave and the physical realm got twisted, if the level shifted into creating nightmares, was reviving a human being inside it a good idea?
After painfully long minutes, the environment gradually started to calm down as the egg began cracking and splitting open. A fragment of the shell fell down, dropping Olivia's body onto the ground in a puddle of an unknown, repulsing liquid.
Without any warning, the botanist's body convulsed, making Justin twitch in response.
He succeeded in his quest.
. . .
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