You determine it's best to weigh your options before charging headlong into the river, so your turn east and begin walking parallel to the waters. The land is barren, and as you glance over from time to time, your eyes catch glimpses of bicycles, trees, and frozen corpses lying lazily in the water with no place to go. After walking for a little while, something else draws your attention: an old house by the river, rotting, abandoned. Acting on instinct, you quickly take cover in the woods and peer out at the building. There's no smoke around, and it doesn't seem to be in use.


You decide to...

You enter cautiously. There may be supplies inside that I can useâ€"or food.

You're barely surviving on the few provisions you have, and that doesn't even include food. You can't afford to pass up this opportunity, even if it is a little reckless. Parking your cart in the woods near the house, you cautiously approach and make your way silently onto the porch. Peeking through the windows, you don't see any signs of movement, so you slowly open the creaky front door and step inside. The interior smells like rotten eggs, and there's an ungodly stench coming from the hallway to your right. You can see a kitchen on the other side of the living room, and there are also stairs leading up onto the second floor of the house. Where do you search first?

You investigate the terrible smell.

Maybe that smell is simply rotting food, and where there's rotting food, there's always the possibility of stumbling across something edible. At least, that's how you justify it to yourself, but really, you're just curious. You turn down the hallway to your right and come across a door with a chain across it.

You unlock the door and enter.

Your recklessness knows no bounds. You unlatch the chain from the door and carefully open it. You pull your lighter out of your pocket and flick it on, holding it out to examine the space before you. There are stairs that lead down and to the left into some kind of cellar. With irrational prospects of food, you step carefully down into the darkness and quickly discover the source of the smell. Bodies stacked up on one another, wide-eyed, lying about in leisure. Decaying. You cover your mouth to keep from gagging, but soon the stench is the least of your concerns.


The light from the door above you disappears, and you can hear the chain being slid back into place.

Next.

You run back up the stairs and frantically try the doorknob, but it's no use. The door won't budge. In a moment of desperation, you hurl your body at the door, only to hear an unsettling noise in your bones and to collapse onto the floor. The smell, the bodies, the hopelessness of it all—you are overwhelmed and can't control the dry sobs arising from your throat. This is it. This must be the end. You idiot!


There's no way of knowing how long you'll be down here. Days, months even. If the people living in the house are cannibals, you will surely perish in a few days and provide sustenance for monsters. If they're people just like you with everything to lose, they'll never open that door, and you'll slowly rot with the rest of these corpses. Either way, you'll be dead eventually. But the waiting. That's the worst part. And it's all that you can do now...