Call Out

Don't make me do it.

He wouldn't respond to their call out, Shawn was gone — for now.

Maybe they could escape... just maybe. It's their chance.

Nonetheless, it is only still a maybe; chances stand slim.

"Fuck, fuck, fuckity-fuck," Shawn caressed the trash-filled cardboard box on his left, half sliding on a puffer jacket over the already reserved doctor's coat. That coat's for him to chuck aside to the back once he gets in the car. He was already dressed for work, now it was a matter of getting there. Jabbing his toes against the insides of his shoes, he nearly kicks his 'work' stand over inside the monitor room. This is why, he thought to himself, I need a fucking shoehorn. Nearly spraining himself from sprinting up the metallic stairway, he shuts behind the exit to the outside world, abandoning the players without a second thought.

   As Shawn pushes his hand on the steering wheel, he diverts his attention now to the realest of concerns, what exactly they were. First, where does he possibly dispose of the cardboard box inside his trunk of tipped-over trash and second, where would there be a valid parking spot for this purple car at this time of day? If he had known of this, he would have driven the regular, normal, unsuspecting, ordinary, red Toyota instead. Fuck James, he really had to slot his long nose into this and meddle with it all, plans and all. No co-workers of his should be able to detect such a hunk of a mess. He wouldn't dare allow any of it to be exposed, especially the live evidence of a car so purple.

   Shawn's sudden disappearance hadn't yet immediately sunk in and so, their collective choice of moving on to the next room took a hot minute without the input of the gamemaster. This realisation was never made until Keith and Susana's violent confrontation was out of the way.

   The next room was... there was no next room, it was another lonely hallway, this time dimmed and carpeted in grey. The walls were painted white with occasional grey smears and suspicious stains while the doors stood lined up in glossed timber. Their knobs were metallic, painted and sheen in gold with nails all impaled through the skin of the soft timber, pierced right through the middle with wooden signs hung up on each of the doors.

   They didn't know what was supposed to happen here, Shawn hadn't replied when they unlocked the pin pad, he hadn't replied when they patiently waited for the neon green timer to go out and yet they still awaited his instructions, for his attention. Yet we waited for his reply from our relentless efforts to call out for stranded answers and semblance to guidance of sorts.

   The timer went out, the alarm went off blaring for half a minute. Any brain could have figured out the nonexistent gamemaster in monitoring the puzzle-solving. A golden opportunity.

They all peered into a room each, agreeing to find anything of use to aid their escape, maybe one of these rooms had the exit, the exit to their misery.

   The first knob was cold, frigid even; the false shine remained as I twisted the knob open, to my surprise the door wasn't locked. They stood behind a bulwark, me as if a wild beast was to lurch onto them. At the very least, they had me as the meat shield so I could spare a few seconds.

   It was a storage facility... no, that would be an understatement. At the very least, a room that stored junk that was sorted into set categories. Fern flicked on the light switch and glanced into the interior, Susana fell onto the occupied bed with half of the space condensed in time-washed books of dust and yet she still found a way to doze off. The walls were painted orange in contrast to the gloom, as such the paint was peeling off and spiders dominated the corners, marking their territories with cobs of home-spun webs. Pieces of furniture were anything but scarce, almost hinting the possibility that more rooms were intended to be built with the theme of antique, with wooden chairs and tables stacked in arrays along the left side of the contained room.