Short Thriller Stories

5. Escape Room

Escape Rooms

Room 1

-Trypophobia

Holes. They were everywhere. They slid down the walls and onto the floor. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't escape them. She was trapped in what seemed like an endless void with the one thing she feared most. Holes. Her worst nightmare.

It had officially been a week since she'd been there. She was surprised she lasted that long. Why had her parents put her here? Money and power in exchange for their child. She had heard the entire conversation last night. "She will be put through the most traumatic tests. I won't sugarcoat it. It was made illegal for a reason. No one can know about this. The police will be told that she tragically died in a car crash last night." But she knew better. Her parents weren't scared of losing her. They were glad to get rid of her. One less problem in their lives. She knew she was better off without them, but a small part of herself longed for the unconditional love she knew she would never get.

The dreams didn't make things better either. The holes were everywhere. No matter how hard she tried, Kayla couldn't move or speak. She couldn't escape the dreams either. Her mind would slip in and out of consciousness throughout the entire dream. There was no escaping it. She would often sit in the back corner, hands wrapped around her knees, thinking about what she did to end up here. But like all her thoughts, they ended in vain.

They had promised to let her go, but it was all a lie. People were cruel. Kayla was once a happy, bigger-than-life sixteen year old girl, but within these walls, she had become stone cold. She couldn't take it anymore. After three weeks of torture, she lost it. She was kicking and screaming, trying to find a way out. But nothing happened. She was trapped.

After trying so hard, she gave up. She accepted her fate. This was her life now. There was nothing more she wanted than to be back home with her dog. A labrador named Daisy. She was the only thing that kept her going. She was stumbling around in the dark, until she felt what appeared to be a button. Without a second thought, she pressed it.

Room 2

-Entomophobia

Kayla looked around carefully, and she felt a glimmer of hope. Another room. Maybe there was an escape after all. Maybe. Just maybe.

The door opened in front of her and she walked down a narrow hallway. At the end of the hallway, there was a chair facing the wall. She turned the chair around and jumped back in horror. There was Maggie, her best friend, dead. She was chained to the chair, her eyes and mouth open. There were bugs crawling all over her dead body and completely consuming her until there was nothing left of her.

Kayla screamed. "Maggie...what did they do to you?" Just then, a voice started talking to her. "Please make your way to the recreation room." The iron door opened in front of her and Kayla had no choice but to go in. She looked back once more at her best friend and with a single tear rolling down her cheek, she went into the room.

She couldn't believe what she saw. Why? She knew at that moment she needed to escape. Inside the room, there was a projector screen on the wall. Just then, a voice blared over the loudspeaker. "Welcome, Kayla. You will have thirty minutes to escape this room. Every minute, we will release a bug into the room. If you cannot make it out in time, you will have to spend the rest of the night here. Good luck."

Kayla doesn't hesitate and tries to solve the first riddle. "I am what you must not do. I kill the mind, through and through. For I am death, I am the void. Face me once, and fate will you avoid."

Kayla thought and thought. She looked over at the timer. 10 minutes left. There were bugs all over the room. A leech was crawling up her leg and she could hear the hiss of roaches. After seeing Maggie like that, she couldn't think straight. But she had to try. She started shouting out random guesses. "A nightmare. Hallucinations. Your stalker." Jenna was about to give up. Everything she did to get to this point was all in vain. The fear she felt when she saw Maggie slumped in the chair. The fear of watching the bugs crawling all over her.