#Homebound: Create Your Own Halloween Doom Story

Cancel The Apocalypse

What do you do when the whole year looks like the Halloween season?

“It’s like living in the face of an apocalypse! I NEED A BREAK!”, you complain to your partner over the phone.

“Let’s cancel the virus. Let’s go somewhere far away where it has neither reached nor will ever reach. Let’s escape the apocalypse!”

Your partner is too excited for you to catch up but escaping the apocalypse does sound tempting, you think.

The partner tells you about their grandparents’ mansion about 100 kilometres away in the outskirts of the town that they have had in their family for about 175 years.

“Plus, it’s the Halloween weekend! Halloween in a two-centuries’ old mansion! Your lips … my lips … Cancel the apocalypse!”

“LOL, that’s enough, centuries-junkie! Let’s go for it!” You are convinced. The partner reaffirms that getting the keys is also going to be a breezy affair.

The drive is smooth and your partner seems to have come prepared — cleaning supplies, food and water for two days, an immersion rod for heating water, spare bulbs, a few knives, a hammer – you’re baffled.

“It’s a 175-year-old mansion. You don’t want to be caught unawares.”

Beyond the rusted gates lies a huge expanse of land lined with trees and covered with shrubs. In the middle of the little wilderness stands the grandiose colonial-era mansion in grey. It doesn’t look too huge but it does look magnificent in a very antiquated fashion.

The patio opens into a verandah with a high ceiling. All the paint has come off and the mansion does look dilapidated in places but it’s not difficult to picture a British official living there.

Your partner parks the car while you look further around. The conical facade of the building is high enough for you to gape a little as you look up.

At 4 pm, the skies are getting darker and there is a nip in the air.

“Happens in the hills,” your partner tells you.

Your partner unlocks the humongous front door that once used to be bottle-green in colour, you guess.

The door opens up to a narrow alley that further leads to a fork.

Your never-quite-so-adventurous partner confesses never having been there but being excited for discovery.

Slightly amazed at their uncustomary and uncanny adventurous spirit, you grumble something but take your bag and move up ahead to find the bedroom.

“Wait … left or right?”

If you choose to take the left turn, click here.

If you think the bedroom is to the right, click here.