The Curse-Part One

A Liminal Horror Serial

Adulthood was hell. I wanted nothing more than to be a kid again.

I was nearly thirty, working a shitty, dead end job at an Amazon warehouse and living in an apartment that was scarcely bigger than a closet. My life consisted of waking up at five in the morning, putting together packages for twelve hours in silence, coming home to eat whatever disgusting microwave meal I happened to have in my freezer, and falling asleep watching TikTok videos on my phone in an attempt to feel something. Wash, rinse, repeat.

This was going to be my life until the very day I dropped dead. I had no life, no hope, no future.

In order to cope with the misery, I often fantasized about my childhood memories. Childhood was the last time I was bright and optimistic. Childhood was the last time the world felt good and fair, a feeling that was ripped away from me the second that I graduated high school and I knew that I would never feel that way again

I passed my old elementary school every night when I walked home from the warehouse every day. By that point, it was late into the night and all of the children had left long ago. It always looked so sad and empty at night, like the bones of a ghost town.

One night, as I stared out at the skeleton of the elementary school playground for a few moments longer than usual. It looked lonely to me, like it could use some company.

Without thinking, I jumped the chain link fence and ran towards the playground. I could only hope that there were no security cameras around to catch what I was doing.

I went straight to the swing set, my favorite piece of playground equipment as a kid. I pumped my legs and flew high as if no time had passed. I wondered if the swing set missed me as much as I missed it.

“Excuse me, mister.” A young voice chimed from behind me.

I startled, turning around to see a young girl dressed in what appeared to be dated early 2000s clothing.

I was so sure that I was clear to explore the playground. What was this child doing here so late at night? Why wasn’t she back at home with her family?

“Oh shit!” I said, I covered my mouth as soon as the curse flew out, “Um..sorry. I mean, can I help you? Do you need me to call your parents for you or something? It’s pretty late for you to be out here by yourself, you know.”

The little girl let out a giggle in response.

“You want to be a kid again, don’t you?” She said.

This statement stopped me dead in my tracks. How would she know that?

“Excuse me?” I whispered.

“I can make you a kid again if you want, if just for one night.” The girl said. “Just follow me.”

Against my better judgment, I followed the girl through the front doors of the school. I knew how it would look if anyone caught me out here with her, but my curiosity was getting the better of me.

The front door of the school was miraculously left unlocked. The girl and I entered with ease

As soon as I entered the school, I felt smaller. My limbs became short and fleshy and my face regained the chubbiness that I barely remembered it once having. When I looked down. I was no longer wearing my work uniform but the black and green striped polo shirt that I remember wearing frequently in the fourth grade.

The school seemed to have shifted around me. It became more colorful, more lived in. The paintings and posters that lined the walls were no longer those of modern kinds but the exact ones I remembered hanging on the wall in 2005.

Then, when I looked up, the hallway and the rooms seemed to stretch on infinitely with no end in sight. It was like I was looking at the bottomless expanse of the universe.

“There you go,” the girl said. “The school is now exactly the way you remember it when you were a kid. The only catch is that there is no one here but you and you alone. Have fun, remember to be back here by sunrise and watch out for the monster.”

The mention of a monster was more than a little alarming.

“Wait!” I asked the girl. “What monster? What do you mean?”

But the girl had already gone, seeming to disappear into thin air.

I was now alone in this endless expanse of a memory of a school

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