I had a shower in my guest bathroom, but now I don’t know where I am

I’m writing this because I need help and I’m hungry. I go to the gym 2 or 3 times a week. I’m a dad of a 2-year-old and a 1-year-old (two under two), and a few months after my son was born, I realised that if I wanted to keep up with them, I would have to get fit. Dad bod before being a dad.

On a night that was no different to any other, I go to the gym. I will typically put my son to sleep after dinner and then my wife will put our daughter down an hour or so after. When she puts her down, I typically leave for the gym so I don’t get home too late. I’m incredibly grateful for that as if I put her to sleep, she can keep me home until 8:30pm and I wouldn’t get home from the gym until 10pm.

I told my wife that when I get home from the gym, I will use the spare bathroom to have a shower after I come back from the gym, so that she can go to bed in our room without me having to disturb her. We have a bathroom in our room, with no door, so it would be loud and bright if I showered in there. She normally goes to bed around 9:30pm, so I recently thought that rather than keep her up to use the bathroom, I’d use the spare.

My gym routine is the same it normally is, play around with all the machines until my body aches and I leave. I’m not a gym person, far from it. I’d rather be at home playing games or watching TV with my wife. So I figured, if each machine works out a different part, why not use them all (there’s about 10). I’m about 80% done with my exercise for the night and I’m more fatigued than usual. Probably lack of sleep from the kids. My son is teething at the moment, so that’s fun.

I get home and nothing is out of the ordinary. Kids are asleep. My wife is asleep, and the house has a few lights on, for me. I prepare for the shower, by getting my PJs and soaps from our main bathroom and head to the guest bathroom. Our guest bathroom is realistically the kids’ bathroom. They bathe in there, brush their teeth, wash their hands, all that stuff. We never have the door closed in there because our daughter thinks she’s “little Miss Independent”. The bathroom is opposite the kids’ rooms, where we keep the doors open for them, so I decide to close the door to the bathroom and shower.

We’ve never actually used this shower before, and I don’t know if I was expecting anything different, but well… It was a normal shower. No issues. Except, halfway through the shower, our ventilation system that sucks up the steam starts making slightly different noises. Like a lower pitched hum. I surprisingly notice it, and look up at it, but once again, normal stuff. If you heard a wood creak or something, just house noises. Nothing of concern.

I finish my shower, dry myself off and pop into my PJs. My phone is showing it’s 9:30pm or somewhere close to that time. I still have enough time to play a game or watch YouTube before I go to bed. Perfect.

I open the door to leave our bathroom, and I see nothingness. Like, it’s pitch black. I’m super confused, because, well, we have a lot of night lights around the house, so, it shouldn’t be pitch black. But also, this wasn’t a “night” pitch black. This was a “there’s nothing there” kind of black. I had to look it up now. Have you ever seen that “Vantablack” paint? Something like that. I bend down to touch the floor and there isn’t one.

There isn’t a floor.

I start panicking, and I grab the first thing I can find: my towel. I throw it out the door and it falls. It was still damp when I threw it so it wasn’t loose as it fell, and fell and fell until my eyes couldn’t see it in the void.

I close the door. My heart is racing, and then I think, I’m probably asleep or something, and it’s a dream. I try all the techniques to see if I’m dreaming: I look at the time, it shows 9:46. I look at my hands, they’re there. Pinch myself, nothing. I had closed the door, so maybe I was just hallucinating. I open the door again, and it is the same void.

I start panicking even more. Where am I? Where are my kids and wife? What is going on?

I’ve seen a thousand movies and I’m always the smartass who points his hand to the TV and says something along the lines of “Oh my god, it’s so obvious, do this.” But with my current state of panic, I have nothing.

I try having another shower, turning on the bath, anything, but nothing works. It’s now 10:30 and nothing is working.

Suddenly, I do hear something. But it’s not coming from the void… but from the ventilation above the shower. It’s that same hum I heard during the shower. But now that the water isn’t running, I can discern the noise a bit better. It doesn’t sound like a vent hum, but something dark, guttural, low. It’s quiet at first and it gets louder. And louder. And louder.

So I am now sitting in my bathtub, using my phone to write this post asking for help.

Help me please.