The Four Blorps of the Half-Life Lobby

Fantomo Gost reflects:

I wandered through the Half-Life Lobby again—an accident, as always. That place clings to drifting spirits like static, a waiting room for souls the universe hasn’t quite sorted out.

That’s where I found them: four small, round beings huddled together in perpetual confusion.

I observed quietly.
What follows is the account of what I witnessed.

No one knows exactly where the Half-Life Lobby is located. It might be a misplaced corner of the afterlife… or a storage closet the universe forgot about. What is known is that four small, round, squishy creatures have been stuck there for—well, they’re not sure. Minutes? Centuries? Hard to tell when the only clock is a glowing orb that occasionally screams.

Their names—because someone had to give them names—were Gub, Flim, Orlo, and Peep.

They looked like someone crossed a tennis ball with a marshmallow and then added legs as an afterthought. Eyes too, but not symmetrical. Or the same size. Or pointed in the same direction.

They weren’t sure what they used to be.

“Maybe we were… uh… hedgehogs?” Flim suggested.

Gub bobbed in place. “I don’t think hedgehogs are this round.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Orlo, who had the self-esteem of a slightly dented pumpkin.

Peep, the nicest and squishiest of the bunch, blinked slowly. “What if we were humans?”

Everyone gasped—partly from the idea, partly because one of them always forgot how to breathe (even though they didn’t need to).

Gub shuddered. “Humans? But humans have… bones. Do we have bones?”

They all wiggled experimentally.
No bones. Zero.
Their entire existence was like being made of stress balls and confusion.

“So what are we?” Orlo asked dramatically.

“The result of a cosmic paperwork error,” said a new voice.

They all turned toward the glowing orb on the wall, which had stopped screaming long enough to speak.

“You four got caught between ‘animal,’ ‘human,’ and ‘miscellaneous,’ so the system assigned you the closest available form.”

“Miscellaneous??” Flim squeaked.

“Look on the bright side,” the orb said. “Most miscellaneous creatures don’t get legs.”

Peep raised one squishy limb. “Is there… you know… any way to leave?”

The orb glowed thoughtfully.

“Well… you are the nicest one. You hold doors for the others. You offer emotional support even though none of them have discernible emotions. And you apologized to that void vortex that tried to eat you yesterday.”

“It was just doing its job,” Peep murmured.

“Exactly.” The orb chimed. “You’re cleared for exit.”

A soft, gentle light formed behind Peep, warm and inviting—like a sunrise made of kindness.

Peep turned to the others. “I’ll miss you.”

Gub tried to nod but rolled over. Flim burst into tears, which evaporated because ghosts can’t cry. Orlo attempted a thumbs-up, but no one was sure if the limb he raised was a thumb.

And Peep stepped into the light…
…and vanished with a satisfied plop.

The orb turned back to the remaining three.

“Well,” it said. “Anyone else want to work on being nicer?”

They all thought about it.

Gub raised a squishy leg. “Does not biting Flim yesterday count?”

“No,” said Flim immediately.

And so the three blorps continued on—confused, squishy, and utterly miscellaneous—trying their best to earn their own escape… someday… maybe.

---

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The Color That Left

The Color That Left

by Nepher Roux
Filed under: Paraspectra

I have no proof it existed, only that it’s missing.

It was a shade of violet—delicate, but not shy. Somewhere between thistle and bruised plum, but with a kind of internal glow. I remember it vividly. That’s what makes this so strange: it’s vivid, and it’s gone.

My grandmother’s coat was that color. She wore it to the pharmacy, to funerals, and once, improbably, to a beach. I used to trace the seams with my fingers and call it “stormflower.”
The rim of our candy dish had it too. In certain lights, it shimmered more mauve than purple, but it always pulled toward that lost hue.
The phone cord in my parents’ kitchen coiled itself into that color like a secret.

But now? Beige. Faded gray. Rose if I’m being generous. And not just faded with time—they’ve drifted away from the color. As if the hue itself was revoked.

I’ve looked for it. Paint chips, fabric swatches, digital palettes. I’ve typed in values that seem close and watched them betray me on screen.
Even descriptions fail—when I try to explain it, people offer lavender, aubergine, heliotrope. None of them are right. They’re loud about being colors. Mine was quieter. It had restraint.

I believe it was real, and that it has been erased—not from memory, but from the visible spectrum. Maybe the cones in our eyes recalibrated. Maybe the light that used to bounce off it now slips through us.

If this has happened to you—if you’ve lost a color—please write. Even if you can’t describe it. Especially if you can’t.

Nothing Happens, but It Happens Again

Nothing Happens, but It Happens Again

by Fantomo Gost
Filed under: Paraspectra

The Corridors

I think the hallway has grown.

It used to be just a short space between my linen closet and the thermostat. Now it stretches on—slowly, almost politely, like it doesn’t want me to notice.

The floor tiles repeat. Black, white, black, white. The walls are dull and dry, like an old hotel that forgot how to be haunted. I count doors. Seven. Then five. Then eight. They shift when I pass them. None of them have numbers, only keyholes shaped like yawns.

The light is wrong. There are fixtures overhead, but no light comes from them. What illumination there is seems to leak sideways, or creep in through some unseen source—a kind of borrowed light, unsure of its permission.

At the end of the corridor is always the room.

The one with the checkered floor.
The bare bulb swinging gently from a bare cord.
And the poster: a girl biting into a glowing pear. Mid-bite. Mid-thought. Her eyes never quite meet mine.

I step into the room. The floor doesn’t creak, but I feel it should. The air is thick with the smell of dust and something sweet—like old fruit and static. I do not speak. I do not breathe too loudly. It’s not fear. It’s courtesy.

I blink.

The Glare Event

The light from the pear changes before I do.

At first, it's subtle—a brighter edge, a flicker that doesn't match the bulb’s swing. Then it grows. It sharpens. The glow starts leaking. Not light exactly—more like the memory of light. It shines in places it shouldn't: across the ceiling, behind me, under my skin.

And then the flare.

Not heat. Not pain. Just a snap in the visual field, like the flashbulb of a camera you never agreed to pose for.

For a moment, I can see the space behind the poster—the fibers, the glue, the hidden wall. Then she’s everywhere.

The girl. Mid-bite. Mid-blink. Floating. Multiplying.

There are dozens of her now. Hundreds? The room isn’t big enough to hold them, but it tries. Some hover at impossible angles, heads tilting like marionettes without strings. Some repeat in a blur—trailing behind themselves like long exposures. Others are just parts: a face here, a pair of shoes there, a single open eye caught in the rainbow light.

The air fills with particles. Not dust—orbs, color flecks, refracted fragments of something trying to become coherent. Rainbows bounce without sources. Light splits into flares, stutters, noise.

The bulb on the cord begins to swing faster, then freezes mid-air.

The walls disappear.

There is no floor.
There is only light, and girls, and a feeling of being very gently lifted, like a paper in an updraft.

I think I say something.
I don’t know in what language.
I taste pears and glass and the inside of an old balloon.

Then: nothing.

Or rather—something else.

The Rooms of Color and Echo

I land gently in a room made of color.

It takes a moment to realize there are walls. They flicker, shimmer, then solidify—barely. The corners don't meet quite right. Lines curve. Shadows bend the wrong way. The floor pulses like it’s breathing beneath a layer of glass.

The checkered pattern is still there, but now in full-spectrum overload—reds bleeding into greens, magentas spiking into neon golds. Every tile seems lit from within, or backlit by something humming just under reality. The room stutters.

So does the girl.

She’s here again. Of course. But she’s... wrong now.

Her dress—the same vintage frills and puffed sleeves—has turned to an unstable spectrum of colors shifting too fast to follow. Her face shifts when you try to focus on it, like a poorly restored reel of lost film. Sometimes she smiles, just faintly. Other times her expression is flat and too still. No blinking. Just watching.

And she’s not alone.

In the corner: a second girl. Same pose. Same face.
Across the room: a third. Wobbling like a rippling projection.
One near the wall flickers between sharp clarity and static.
And one of them—half-formed—spins slowly up from a spiral of prism-paste like she’s being reconstituted from color. Her limbs snap into place, one by one, then soften, just barely human. She looks at me without looking. She’s the clearest of them all.

Some are stretched at the edges, their outlines fraying at the edges in colored echoes shimmering in three parted lights. Their eyes never meet mine directly. But I know they see me.

In one room, I try to speak. My voice glitches—comes out as color. A beam, a blur. The girls absorb it like plants. Their dresses ripple. One tilts her head in perfect silence.

The light bulb is always there, but in these rooms it behaves differently. One swings in slow, syrupy arcs. Another flickers with a sound delay, as if responding to a different dimension’s rhythm. One glows blue, then orange, then blinks out entirely—leaving the room still inexplicably lit.

Each room is brighter than the last. Too bright. The kind of bright that burns clean through meaning.
But the girls are never surprised.
They just keep watching.
Multiplying.
Matching their rooms.

And somewhere, inside all the light, the poster is still glowing.

Final Transmission

I don't know how long I've been here. The light never changes.

Sometimes I think the rooms are looping.
Sometimes I think I’m the one being looped.

The girls aren’t following me.
They’re waiting for me to understand something.
But I don’t speak their frequency.

If there's a way out, it isn't a door. It might be a blink I haven't blinked yet.
Or the pear.
Or the moment when the bulb finally burns out.

Until then, I’ll keep walking.

There are still more rooms.

Fantomo out.