You awaken once more from an unexplained sleep, not to an alien landscape or unfamiliar surroundings this time. You've managed to find your way back to what you perceive as Earth, and for once, your sense of perception is correct and not deceiving you. Deception is after all, the last thing we'd want you to experience on this odyssey. You'll have enough obstacles as it is, without us simply inventing things for you to overcome on a whim.
As you rise to a standing position, you see a large, decrepit building directly in front of you. The entrance looks to be approximately five feet away from your feet, and being the curious one you are, you decide it would be a good idea to enter the building. You walk the short distance needed to reach the front of the building's exterior, and pull open what appears to be a door, with an ornate handle. As one could expect from a building this poorly upheld over the years, the door falls off its hinges when you pull open. The action not enough to deter you from your excursion into this long forgotten piece of history that people would rather repress than research.
Stepping through the open doorway, you can see the paint on the interior walls have began to peel away, falling to the ground as you place your hand on said wall to help you navigate this dark maze of a building. A cool draft nips the back of your neck as you venture further and further into the building, filling the air you're breathing with a distinct sense of dread. It's as if you could breathe in the surmounting tension in the room as your legs force your body further into the building that your brain is suddenly having a bad feeling about. Suddenly, you feel something crawl down the hand that you still have pressed against the and up your arm.
Shaking your arm wildly, you hear a thud as whatever it is that decided your body was a perfect perch hits the ground. The sound of scampering can be heard as the unidentified creature crawls off, back toward the entrance of the building. Hesitantly, you place your hand back on the wall to guide you. You look around in the nigh pitch black hall that you've found yourself in, questioning why you're here, a simple question with a simple answer.
The answer; you haven't finished your journey yet.
As you keep progressing through this place, the wall that has been guiding you ceases to exist. Thinking nothing of it, you walk headfirst into a wall. After your head bounces off the wall in front of you, you spin around on one heel and walk down the opening of the hallway that existed in the area of the wall that guided you this far. I should've remembered that the concept of turning was too complex for you, I apologize. There should've been a neon sign pointing you to the direction you should be going, shouldn't there? I'll get right on that for the next person taking this journey, I assure you.
You move slowly down this hallway, no longer relying on the wall to guide you. At the end of the hallway is a faint light leaking out from under what can be recognized as a door. Believing this to be your means of escape from this truly self imposed torture, you begin to frantically rush toward the slightest hope of freedom. Finally, you reach the door and no matter how hard you pull, it won't budge, leaving you in this dark, dank hallway with not a single, solitary hope of escape. If I were a betting entity, I would give you five minutes before you start biting off your arm like a trapped coyote. You would if I told you that was the only way to get out, wouldn't you?
"Just a moment!"
You hear a voice, feminine, from behind the door. In the silence following, you can hear footsteps move closer and further from the door, causing you to lose quite a bit of your patience. The door slowly creaks open, blinding you in a wave of light. As the shock subsides, you realize that you're still sitting in the position you've been since you saw how futile the door was, and when you failed to realize that you could just go back through the door you came through. As you stand up, you lock eyes with the woman behind the door, once again looking familiar, but the name eludes your tongue at this point in time. Silently, she motions for you to come in, which you immediately agree to do.
"Welcome, to my humble abode. What's left of it, that is."
You step into the room, and the first thing that you can see are bookshelves. On the spines of the books contained in the shelves is writing in a language that you can't quite make out, let alone understand. The woman, our host, takes a seat at a table a few feet away from where you stand, trying to make sense of the book titles. You hear a high pitched whistle and turn around, sure enough our host is the source. She impatiently waves you over to where she is seated, pointing toward the chair opposite her. Not eager to annoy her, you speed walk to the table and take a seat. Looking her in the face, her name begins to come to you. Ultimately, you can't help but blurt it out when you finally come up with the right answer.
"J-Jessie?"
She sighs, visibly frustrated at that outburst.
"Please, call me Jessica. Now Mister Sayors, what is it that you wanted from me?"
The revelation sets in that you have in fact been XWF interviewer extraordinaire, Steve Sayors all along. A knot forms in your throat as you struggle to think of the first question to ask the woman sitting before you, Jessica Diaz. I would make sure it's the right one, your life may or may not depend on it!
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