You Can't Spell Funnel Without Fun

Chapter 7: Arm in the Hole!

Suze had plunged her arm into the hole up to the elbow. The world froze.

A quest box identical to the default one in Realms of Ifaneli with its pixellated stone-like edges and the same semi-gothic, medieval-inspired, and absolutely difficult to read text appeared:

Time is not on your side. You two are stuck here in the Funnel of Madness! Poor you! And while you complain about how poorly designed it is -- nearby is a nest full of hundreds of Baby Giant Spider eggs and they will hatch all at once. You have until the hourglass runs out to find a way out of this apartment or it's Ate O'Clock!

The text remained until I read it all and then it minimized and swooped down into a new pop-up window at the lower right of my vision where it only showed Ate O'Clock and a Timer that counted down 15 minutes.

She pulled her arm out of the hole and in her hand was a glistening, shiny hourglass. "Oh, an ampulheta. What's it called in English?" She got up from the floor to stand.

"Hourglass."

"It's ticking down sand. Eh, I guess there is sand in this dungeon, afterall."

I didn't follow Suze's line of thought, but I questioned her, "Didn't you read the quest text?"

"No. I never read that." Suze scoffed. "You will just tell me what I need to do always."

I paused for a moment as I wondered if that was some kind of dig or not, but then let it go. There were more pressing issues. "We have to find our way out of this place by the time the timer runs out or more of those spiders will --" The time in my quest log sputtered a bunch and dropped by 30 seconds all of a sudden. Freaked, I shouted, "What are you doing?"

Suze shook the hourglass.

The quest dropped another fifteen seconds as sand poured through faster than it would on its own.

"No no no!" I lunged. "Please give me that. Don't shake it!" I took the hourglass from Suze and held it close to my chest, careful not to grip it too tightly lest it break and the sand pour out all at once.

"Wow. You need more of that breath thing you do."

This lack of understanding was really getting on my nerves. It didn't help that we were stuck in this game -- if that's what we could call it -- without a user manual, or any understanding of why we were actually there in the first place. The timer wasn't helping. Each second passing felt like another click higher in my anxiety. We needed to leave. Time was ticking. Ate O'Clock did not sound like it was going to be a good time.

Then Suze, inexplicably kneeled down to shove her arm deeper back into the hole. She felt around and dropped further to the ground, putting her arm deeper into the hole almost up her shoulder. "Don't put your arm in the hole!" I shrieked.

"Arm in the hole!" Suze cheered. "You know. That would make a great name for an achievement." In Realms, Suze's favourite thing had to been to chase after all the achievements you could get in the game. Also looting everything and filling up half a dozen alt banks full of random junk and grey loot. Whenever you needed some obscure item it was almost guaranteed that Suze would have a couple stacks of it in one of her banks.

"Hey! I just got the achievement. Arm in the Hole." She still shoved around her arm in the space. "Obrigada!" She said while looking up at the ceiling. She looked very religious in that moment.

Since she had her arm down there, I asked, "Is there anything else in that hole?"

"Just poop."

I gagged.

"I'm kidding Kaylee. No, there's nothing else down there. Wait. Wait. Waaaaaai!" Suze wailed and she began thrashing about. She had the most macabre, terrified and pained look on her face.

I screamed, nearly dropping the hourglass in the process.

Then Suze cut off the screams and she laughed. She removed her arm from the hole and shook it at me. "Joking. Joking."

"Don't do that to me." I took a deep breath and I hoped it would trigger my Calming Breath skill, but my heart pounded too much. And the time, it ticked down. This all wasn't helping. I let Suze know that. "Look, this isn't helping. I'm pretty sure that if these spiders hatch, they're going to come out of that hole."

"Logical." Suze nodded. "Imagine if you had actually pooped in that hole. The spider could have ended up in your butt."

"That's a point." I pondered out loud and remembered that I still needed to pee. "What are we going to do if we have to poop? I'm going to have a complex if I have to poop over a hole. Especially if spiders come out of it. I can't even go in an outhouse."

Suze's eyes glazed for a second and then there was suddenly a porcelain toilet over the hole. "Here. Poop away." Suze pushed the flush and the toilet made a flushing sound.

My mind full-on fritzed for a moment. More questions popped into my head about our toilet at home -- for it was definitely ours because it was my Hello Kitty toilet seat cover -- being ported in here. How was there water in the bowl? Where was the plumbing? Why the toilet?

"No plumbing, but it works." Suze said, mildly impressed. Then she dropped the Hello Kitty toilet roll stand including six pristine Kirkland rolls of toilet paper just in front of herself. "Look. Even your precious Costco butt paper." Suze grinned and flourished with her arms as if she were a model presenting the toilet and paper to me.

I could hold my pee. The timer was more important than my bladder. We didn't have time. "We have to go. Loot those." I heard the bossiness in my voice so I added, "Please." I hadn't even thought about toilet paper until that moment. Precious, precious toilet paper. What other things existed in my life that would become precious commodities without being able to do a Costco run?

The lights went out again.

"Tsk."

Cantrip Minor Globes of Light. Somatic and verbal components required. Duration of 40 seconds at this level of the spell.

Still no upgrade to the time of that globes of light spell. Darn it.

"So if we need to leave," Suze said as she hefted up the porcelain toilet, water sloshing in its bowl audibly. It disappeared into her inventory and she only staggered a little as the weight poofed away. "I don't know how we will do that."

"We have how many exits? There's the windows which seem to drop down into an abyss."

"This hole." Suze kicked at the edge of the poop hole. "That leads down to a bunch of spiders."

"Which likely means the apartment beneath us is not a good place to go. Out the front door then."

"The front door isn't a door."

"The front door isn't a what?"

"Ehh. That's just the thing." She picked up the toilet paper stand and pointed out of the bathroom. "After me." The stand disappeared as Suze pushed past into the hall. I followed, my lights floating ahead of me and trailing after her.