The Rat in the Maze (Poofless-esque)

Overt

"Preston, pl-"

"Shhh!!!" He awkwardly braces your legs until you can regain your grip and continue leading the way to... who knows where. You try to decide if heading back to the fridge would be a good idea, but you can't think of any viable alternatives. He slowly, unhappily, silently follows behind you. For the first time, you wonder if having him around you is good for your personal health. He has been acting increasingly odd over the past week, and you don't think the stress and trauma of this little ordeal is going to improve that.

The third floor stairwell doesn't give you much of a reprieve; before you know it, you are crawling through the upper half of the first floor again. Luckily, most of your time on the first floor earlier was spent travelling in confused circles, and the coffee shop is reaching up toward your feet in no time. You wait next to the countertop to see if he needs help, then wonder why you bothered. You head to the fridge and find a bag of supposedly fresh fruit to hold against the giant, puffy blisters on your hands, settling down in the corner farthest from the barely-open door to hesitantly pull the wood splinters out from between the swollen folds of slowly inflating skin.

At least you won't be editing for a while after this.

You glance up and catch him staring at you from his corner again, but instead of picking another fight with the overgrown baby, you rip open the end of the bag of mangoes and start eating them. You imagine the look of irritation on his face as you log in to Twitter on your phone to assure everyone that you are fine. Your phone looks like it is having a seizure as hundreds of tweets and texts flood your screen. You feel strangely... unworthy of their concern. It suddenly hits you for the thousandth time that you're an internet celebrity now, somewhat. You write a follow-up tweet and mute the app before you go over to start trying to answer Jon's nearly incoherent texts.

You decide you need a fucking vacation. When you get out of this fucking fridge, you should call in that bachelor's party you owe him.

That could be fun.

You survived.

Respawn?