The Sketch Survivors: The Enemy Among Us

Going to Bed

The Bedchambers were lit by blue lanterns spewing their light onto a ghastly room. Curtains were hung on two sides, making the room appear lengthier than it was tall. Three familiar letters were emblazoned on the smooth, reflecting floor ahead of them; three letters Soal never again wanted to associate himself with.

P,

O,

and L.

A blind man could spot them before him, and cower or flee. Cliasin's soylent should have been a warning. Was this really the Bedchambers? Everyone (Soal, Irene, Lucy, George, Thronost) gasped in dreadful awe, awaiting for a terrifying revelation to strike them harder than the Key-sword Irene still contained in her pocket.

George, now heavily irritable, came to his senses and shushed his fellow Revolutes. "Do you realize our luck not to have been captured all this time?" he whispered menacingly. "Lint Corp must be putting us on. Look, there is a sign that reads Bedchambers, Gulley will meet his fate here by our hands."

"You do not realize, Hamilton," Thronost questioned his colleague's thoughts, "what kind of impact that will have on your isolationist demeanor."

"Cut that out," George's cheeks were redder than autumn leaves. "We must obey the code Irene set for our Legion."

"Well, George, I uphold that code," Irene was feeling rebellious, and she had the power, so she made the jump. "Recognize the three "don'ts": Don't get involved, don't get caught, and, most importantly, don't rush to embrace the Revolution as we enter enemy territory. Don't you remember this eternal code?"

George sighed, but did not speak in return. There was not only tension stirring among the Revolutes in general, but simply among this small Legion of them. It may have been a symbolization of the times ahead of them.

Lucy, alarmed, sent up a peace sign with her left hand, signifying cover according to the conduct Irene had expected used. In response, conversation was halted, and the legionnaires crawled over behind the left curtain in the room, as a desperate effort to avoid capture. (Thankfully, there was another curtain behind them.) No one had discerned the source of her maneuver, until footfalls began to resonate around the room. Peeking through the gap separating the floor and the curtain, all of them could catch two recognizable black boots prancing into the Bedchambers. No further action was truly taken, while our Un-Characters (and Half-Character) simply hoping for the best in this vulnerable occasion, silently shuffling their own boots on the floor.

It was unquestionably Gulley when his voice, now bent with a taint of hunger, erupted across the Bedchambers. "Director of Sketches reporting to KA6 Bedchambers, I repeat, Director of Sketches reporting to KA6 Bedchambers." Gulley shifted around, probably with his hands placed on his narrow hips. "That is, I would be reporting if there were one here to which I can report."

No one else replied to his inquiry. "I said..." he began in fury, but that died along with his loyalty in his match. "...This must be some kind of trick. Revolute hijackers, reveal yourselves, you dirty vermin."

Irene bit her lip, but did not make any action.

Gulley growled, and shot his head towards the site of the legionnaires, smiling with a maniacal content. "Ah-ah-ah," his boots settled mere inches before Irene's fingers in particular, sending a genuine chill of doubt down her battered, bruised spine. Gulley stomped on her right index finger to expose her, and she attempted strenuously not to emit a sound, yet she wailed quietly anyway.

Gulley continued to drag her, by her finger, beyond the curtain. "Good show, Grammor," he snarled, hoisting her up by her ironclad shoulders. "What a long, strange trip it's been. First was your pitiful betrayal. Then came your sickening disaster with the Alliance, and the persistent Revolution that just won't leave. How I abhor your kind."

"How I abhor your race, too, despicable Director," Irene sneered, spitting on her nemesis in disgust. "You poison me."

The legion, somehow entranced by Gulley's presence, failed to mobilize and attack Gulley with their superiority. It must have been an odd curse of the seasoned Un-Character that he technically was. They remained ignorant between the two curtains of the left side of the Bedchambers, uncaring of the plight of Irene.

She hurried to draw her sword, but she had no quiver at all. Horrified, she watched as Gulley cackled and reached for Arshel, its sheath slung over his own shoulder. From stories Soal had heard in the Kiwi Realm, Gage was excellent in the field. His skills were unmatched by Moth or Soal combined... unfortunately.

"Your folly is staggering," the Director of Sketches taunted as he brandished Arshel before his soon-to-be victim.

"The pathetic clockwork of your mind must have been turning around the demise of Jonathan Wilwood," Irene reminded Gulley of regretful memories, but he was unmoved. "You, being as crazy as yourself, must have done it on your own."

"Idiot!" Gulley screamed in the face of poor Irene, now clutching her neck with the sword in his right hand. "The Revolution will die! Polygmius is well underway, as you will see. We have begun distributing soylent to our Un-Characters at the Congregation, each bottle mixed with the Polygmian Factor that will supersize their might. The Bedchambers are a place for Polygmian Sleepers who hibernate under the influence of the Factor until they awaken to serve our purposes. You, too, will come to obey the law of our people. Lint Corp will gain your trust."

"No!" Irene screamed as she was lowered to her back on the ground, forbidding her from escape. Gulley cautiously pulled a filled beaker of soylent, identical to the kind that littered Cliasin's lair, from his frock coat's wide shirt pocket; careful not to spill its contents. Irene squirmed, but as Gulley forced open her mouth and poured in the soylent, the symptoms of the corporate member's fluid rendered her unconscious as soon as she finished sipping it.

Chuckling, Gulley stuffed the emptied beaker in his shirt pocket once again, and exited the Bedchambers, aware of the grueling fate to which he had subjected the most persistent enemy of his career.