The girl opened her eyes. She wore a gray tank top, gray shorts, and black combat boots. She paced around the room, exploring the space. The room was sixteen feet by sixteen feet with a sixteen-foot ceiling. Four-foot square doors lay in the center of each white wall, surrounded by white ladders that lined the walls and led all the way to the monkey-bar celling grid. Unseen lights lit the room, just enough light to see, but not too bright to be uncomfortable.
Each door was the same, including the ones in the center of the ceiling and ground, except someone seemed to have opened the ceiling door.
Suddenly, there was a scream, and a damp tank top fell through the ceiling door. The girl picked up the sweaty tank top and threw it back the direction it came from. It caught on the ladder about ten feet short of the top.
Someone above swore violently, and red light flashed through the bars. The girl climbed up, swinging on the bars to the door in the ceiling. Quickly, she opened the door and pushed herself up to peek into the identical room above.
Two teenage boys stared back at the girl, halting their fighting. One was an athletic shirtless Caucasian male with black hair, and the other was a tall, slightly chubby Chinese male. All three of them were around fifteen years old, and they all wore the same gray outfit with combat boots, except the athletic one's shirt was in the room below.
"Hello," the girl said. The athletic boy puller her out of the door and into the room. There was a pocketknife in his other hand.
"Who are you?" the athletic boy asked. Suddenly, the lights turned red again. A stainless steel blade whisked through the door, snagging the girl's right combat boot and pulling it off as she jumped away. It fell into the room below. The lights returned to normal.
The chubby boy shut the door below her. "Who are you?" he repeated. He spoke with a slight accent, one unfamiliar to the girl.
"Claire," the girl said quickly. "What about you two?"
"Gabe," the athletic boy responded. "And he's Mark."
Claire nodded and walked over to the door behind the two teens. "Where do these lead?" She tested the door's handle, finding it unlocked.
"A far as we can tell, just other rooms like this one," Gabe responded. He spoke with a slight swagger, probably used to being cooler than everyone else was.
Claire opened the door, finding a dark void behind it. The air coming from the void was slightly cooler than the air in the room, but other than that, it was formless. There was no visible bottom or top; no walls were discernible.
"That's not a room," Claire said sarcastically. She turned right to see Mark standing in front of a door leading to a similar void. Gabe, on the other hand, opened the door opposite to Claire's that led to a room almost like the one they were in, except it looked warped, like a drug induced hallucination.
"What’s that?" Gabe asked hesitantly.
"Why don’t you find out?" Claire suggested, walking over and shoving him in. She stepped back, curious if Gabe would jump back out and attack her. He did have a pocketknife, after all. Surprisingly, Mark followed Gabe into the room. Claire stayed outside the trippy room.
"What's up with this place?" Mark asked. He ran his hand across the wavy, deformed ladder rungs that lined the walls. One of doors was marked with a red "x," and there was a foul, metallic smell in the air.
Suddenly, in one swift motion, Gabe came up behind Mark and stabbed him in the back of the neck, just where it met the shoulder. Mark yelped and collapsed. Immediately, Claire slammed the door shut and slowly backed away from it. Turning right, there was one last unopened door on a wall. She grasped that handle and turned.
This room was just like the one she was in, white and a perfect cube, with square doors on the centers of the walls, floor, and ceiling. She stepped in, looking around. Nothing out of the ordinary. Curious, Claire climbed up the walls and swung on the monkey bars to the door in the center of the ceiling. Carefully, she opened the door.
A bowling ball whizzed past her head. In panic, Claire shut the door and frantically made it back to the wall and down. The bowling ball rolled around, showing a seam that ran across the ball's equator. Claire picked it up and unscrewed the two halves.
A complicated electromagnetic engine spun apart, sending a drill bit into the ceiling door as if it had a homing device. Claire jumped back in horror as it drilled itself through the door's lock mechanism. The door fell open, unleashing a torrent of identical bowling balls.
Quickly, Claire forced open the door on the floor. Below was a room with its white walls covered in strange blue circular drawings. A dead ten-year-old lay in one corner, a blue sharpie in her decaying hands. A bucket filled with different shades of blue sharpies lay next to the decomposing body. With nowhere to go, Claire hastily climbed into the room and shut the door.
A few of the bowling balls had fallen in, and they rolled around as Claire climbed down from the ceiling. The nauseating smell of the ten-year-old's rotting body completely permeated the room. Of all the doors, the one on the wall directly opposite was marked with a red "x," just like the one in the warped room. She walked over, careful not to trip on the bowling balls.
Claire grasped the handle of the x-marked door and pulled. Blood seeped out of the edges of the door, thickly spreading on the floor. Quickly, Claire jammed it shut. She backed away, grabbing a sharpie, and walked to the door to the right of the bloody one.
Ha! Cliff hanger. Hope you don't get too annoyed, though.
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