You are Standing at a Crossroads

An old favorite, so I had to give it five stars. I like "trapped in a strange world" stories, and this one delivers. The repetition, uncanny setting, and unexplained mysteries all work great together. Eerie piano music really sets the tone. I'm also a sucker for horror and mysterious non-euclidean spaces, so this idea of a purgatorial setting with a repeating crossroads checks all the right boxes. While it's never laid out explicitly, you get the sense that you've done something horrible and that your experience is a punishment for past sins. The scene with the feather sticks out as a reference to the Egyptian weighing of the soul and an implication that the protagonist is far from innocent.

The scenes themselves are subtle and off-putting in just the right ways. The imagery—empty zoo cages, train stations, clocks stuck before midnight—drives in that sense of stasis and inescapability. The ending is a total gut punch. (Spoiler - click to show)The desire to escape is the carrot that's been luring you along the whole time, and you finally reach the ending only to realize there's no escape, and you're doomed to repeat these events forever.

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