One strange room
The room is unfamiliar. I don't know how I got here, and frankly I'm not sure if I want to. The walls are charcoal grey, with a few pitiable bookshelves that have clearly been raided by an equally bored former occupant. My head is throbbing, all my joints hurt (nothing new there), and I must be at least 10 feet underground from how my ears ache. It stinks of fumes.
The only exit is a door in the exact same shade of grey as the rest of my surroundings. I stumble over, and while there’s a keypad, it opens right up when I try my birthday. Slightly bewildered at this development, I nonetheless seize the opportunity and walk right through.
Well, it’s a break from the grey! The walls and flooring are covered with garish patterns, kitsch depictions of cutesy kittens, glittery dolphins, the works. It does the miraculous task of including every single colour of the rainbow and failing to make a single one match. The overall impression is as if a peacock decided to go into interior design.
As I’m tugging on a bedazzled curtain, a huge key falls out, smacking me directly on the head and magnifying my migraine tenfold. I start coughing at the dust cloud produced by it, but not before noting a carved message in the wall – “IT’S TIME.”
Breaking out into a cold sweat, I start running through all the people who might want me gone, or, I think as I desperately try the lock, dead in an oversaturated grave. Is this a sting? Were the company secrets I took with me that valuable? My palms are slick with stress, and thoughts of various undignified ways I could meet my end crowd my head, so I hardly even notice the person sneaking up behind me, with a rag doused in cholorofo-
I blink, shaking myself out of an artificial haze. What fresh torture awaits me here? As my eyes adjust to the dim florescent light, I take in odd details. The streamers. The uneaten cake. Most shocking of all, it seems that my few friends and family are all gathered around me, while I’m tied up in a rickety chair.
“What on earth is this?!”, I spit, still not understanding what exactly is going on.
They all look at each other knowingly.
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” They cheer, almost falling over themselves with giggles. They gesture to the banner behind them that reads “Party Escape! The Finest Escape Experience In the World!”
Wiping the laughter from her eyes, my sister blurts out that since I love escape rooms so much, they’d decided to orchestrate a REAL one, just for me!
And now they’re all laughing their guts out around me, but they haven’t seemed to notice that as they’re chuckling away, I’ve managed to untie myself, quietly take an interesting-looking key lying on the dinner table, and head up to the final door.
We’ll see who likes escape rooms now.