Strangely Familiar Uncomfortable Liminal Spaces Novels & Stories

The space they stepped into felt nothing like the maze they had just escaped, and yet it carried something far more unsettling. Where the maze had been tight and suffocating, this new place was open—too open. A wide, circular ground stretched beneath their feet, smooth like polished stone, surrounded by a vast darkness that had no visible walls, no clear end, no sense of boundary. It felt like standing in the center of something unfinished, a place that existed only for what was about to happen.

At dahil sa sobrang kawalan sa sarili ngayon kong napansin na nasa loob na pala kami ng eroplano at si tyrone pa mismo ang nag kabit ng seatbelt ko bago ito matulog mukhang napuyat din siya katulad ko. Nagising ako dahil pakiramdam ko mag isa lang ako 'madilim ang lugar at kahit isang tao ay wala akong matanaw at ang pag kakatanda ko ay may kasama akong tao pero hindi ko alam kung bakit ngayon ay wala na siya. Para akong bagay na iniwan na parang wala ng pakielam,parang isa akong laruan na pag katapos niyang laruin ay basta basta nalang niya akong itinabi at hindi na inalala.

Jenny found me minutes later, sitting on the floor with my palm against my chest. “You’re trembling,” she said softly. “What’s wrong?” I turned, and the concern in her eyes was genuine, warm, and soothing, the kind of comfort no one else could give me. “I just… feel off,” I said. “Like there’s something shifting inside me. Something I don’t understand.” Jenny took my hands gently. “Growth always feels strange at first.” “It doesn’t feel like growth. It feels like…” I hesitated. “Like I’m stepping into a space that wasn’t meant for me.”

Our struggles had only made us interesting to things that lived in the cracks. The air in the penthouse grew thick, resistant. The warped light from outside coalesced, forming a shimmering, vertical tear in the middle of the room. It wasn't a door. It was a wound. Through it, I couldn't see another place, but a shifting, non-Euclidean geometry that hurt to look at, a realm of pure, chaotic information. A tendril of that chaotic energy, neither light nor matter, slithered through the tear. It ignored me. It moved with a dreadful, purposeful grace directly toward Lina.

Somehow, in their eyes, I had become the problem. We weren't the same kind of people. I apologized to Wyatt for wrecking his birthday and told him plainly I wouldn't regret walking away. My application for overseas study had already been approved. In a month, I would leave Riverton for a program in Amerinth. For the next few days, Bernard didn't contact me, but Vera did. She kept sending me intimate photos of the two of them. I neither responded nor blocked her. I wanted to see how long their little fling could last.

Not because it’s carpeted but because the panel resonance has been deliberately delayed. The walls don’t press. The corners don’t crowd. Every contour curves just wide enough that her body doesn’t feel observed only accompanied. Eden stills. Looks around. Not for cameras. Not for logic. But for the question blooming in her chest: “How do you feel at home in a place you’ve never touched… that already touches you like it remembers?” The console on the far wall flickers once. No greeting.

Motive would invite correction. The world thins by half a breath, and I am no longer inside any human place. I am inside function. The sensation is not darkness. It is clarity stripped of comfort. Everything here exists in terms of relation and weight. Threads stretch outward in every direction, faint lines of tension drawn across an invisible frame. Some glow with probability. Some tremble with impending endings. Some already fray, already loosening. And then the pressure focuses. Fate does not appear. It never has.

And I stood there, caught between the life I thought I knew and the terrifying, exhilarating possibility that everything I felt was real. The next few days were a strange, liminal space. With the guys here, my house didn’t feel like a mausoleum anymore. It felt like a chaotic, temporary refuge. They turned my grief into a background hum, a constant sleepover where Gavin claimed the couch and Erik, after losing a brutal arm-wrestling match, was relegated to a nest of blankets on the floor.

“And I will try to listen.” “Yes.” “But this?” She looked at the dark shape. “This was not space you chose.” Lucas's voice hardened. “No.” The relational address stabilized. HOME Not house. Not coordinate. Not ownership. Mutual connection. The First Door opened. Lucas saw it. He ran. The white room stretched again. The shape multiplied. Thousands of dark silhouettes appeared. The Unobserved. Not one people. Many. Some shouted: “LET HIM GO.” Others: “HE WILL EXPOSE US.”

Our bodies were fused at the mouth, and our unity was like a religion. With each song that played, the music got better, and we got closer to the darker perimeter of the dance floor. Our hands roamed each other and anyone near us in an all-out gropefest. I'd never liked strangers touching me, though here, even the random dude brushing up against me as he took a spot against the wall was euphoric. Strategically placed shadows provided hiding places for club goers to enjoy themselves. I couldn't speak for Cora—and she hadn't said a word—but I'd never felt so alive in the dark. My fingers ran under her blouse and beneath her bra while hers dipped into my jeans to find my length. There, with hun