No escape

Arrival

-Mira-

-August 8, 12:45 pm-

"I'm so excited! This is gonna be amazing!"

The car filled with laughter, chatter, the booming radio, and August sun as we made our way to the party destination. They were right, it was going to be exciting, none of us had ever done an escape chamber, but I figured it'd be awesome anyways.

My best friend, Allie, turned to me in from her seat in the front, "So Mira, how old are you gonna be again?"

"15," I responded. I awaited her teasing comment eagerly. I knew it was coming either way.

"Haha, I'm still older than you!"

"Yeah, that's because you're a sophomore and your birthday is in December!" I shot back jokingly. We broke into giggles as the car slowed to a stop.

"We're here, girls!" My mom announced as she unlocked the car doors. "I hope you ladies have fun! Mirabelle, remember to call me when you're done."

"I know mom, we will!"

I hopped out of the car, followed by my friends as Allie came around the front. The building wasn't that interesting, just cinder blocks painted a light gray and a sign that said "Escape Chambers and Laser Tag". I wondered what it'd be like inside.

Which one did you pick? A super scary, thrilling one?" My friend, Emma, asked boldly.

"I hope not, I'd rather it'd be calmer and maybe have more puzzles to solve," Emma's twin sister, Sarah, practically whispered as she fiddled with the ends of her bleach blonde braid. The twins bickered as they walked inside, though you could really only hear Emma since Sarah nearly always talked like she was in a library.

"I honestly don't care which one we do. As long as it's exciting I'm chill with it," Allie said calmly, flipping her dark auburn hair a bit. "Now, am I gonna have to drag you in there or will you walk in yourself?"

I realized then that we were that last ones outside. Grace, Paige, and Livi must've gone in after the twins. I walked into the air conditioned building as Allie followed me. The rest of my group was at the front desk, waiting impatiently for the guy to let them through. I noticed the front desk guy, his name tag read "Justin," seemed to be eyeing me and my friends like we were 5 year olds in front of a case of breakables.

"Are you the 1:00 group for the Dungeon escape chamber?" He asked inquisitively.

"Yep, and this is all 7 of us. We filled out the waivers already, right?" I replied.

"You did, you can wait in the other room, your game master will retrieve you soon."

We sat in the room quietly, anticipating the arrival of the game master, whoever they were. When the game master finally came, we all stood up excitedly.

"1:00 for Dungeon?" She asked in cheesy enthusiasm. Her name tag read "Allison."

"Yep! That's us!" Emma shouted.

"Ok. Right this way." She replied, a huge fake smile pasted on her face. We all followed her down a narrow back hallway. I was practically bouncing the entire way, and Allie made sure to point it out.

"And here we have the majestic Mira-bunny in her natural habitat." she said mockingly, nudging me with her elbow. I said nothing, but turned and put my hands behind my head as pretend bunny ears, giving her a death glare. Everyone else giggled. By this time, we were already most of the way there, and I was getting more excited by the second.

"How much further?" I asked excitedly.

"Actually we're here." She replied

"But it's a door." Sarah said confused.

"Sarah! Stop being rude, the room is obviously behind the door." Emma replied glaring at her twin. She unlocked the door and told us the rules and the background story.

"You are a group of friends who have been wrongly accused by the King. You are being kept in the dungeon below his castle. Luckily all of the guards are on break, but they will come back in one hour. Your goal is to escape your false arrest before the guards come back and find you trying to escape. You may have three hints only. To get your hints, just jump around to get my attention. You all must be in agreement on getting the hint. Sorry about the lecture, here are your blindfolds."

"Blindfolds!" We all exclaimed at once.

"Yes, were you not informed about the physical restraints?" She asked worriedly, "you did fill out the waivers didn't you?"

"Yes we did, but I didn't know that included blindfolds!" I said eyeing my friends to see what they thought about this. They looked cool with it, but I personally was a bit scared.

"Oh," she said to us like she thought we were idiots. "the blindfolds are for while we're getting you set up in the room, so you don't get extra time looking at the puzzles. You can take them off as soon as we say you can start."

"Okay, that sounds reasonable." Allie replied, as chill as ever. We all grabbed our blindfolds and put them on. Then the gamemaster took us on a walk that seemed a lot longer than I assumed it would take to walk to a door that was right in front of us, but I didn't care. I was still had loads of adrenaline from walking in a strange building blindfolded. When we reached our destination, the gamemaster instructed us to sit down. She also told us that there were cameras and speakers in all of the rooms we could go into, and that they might need to contact us during the escape and for hints to be relayed. I could feel that my arms were bound in front of me and that I was shifted so that I was back to back with someone, but I couldn't tell who. I heard a soft thud and a few clanks but I assumed it was a puzzle being reset. A rope was loosely wrapped and tied around us and I heard footsteps leaving the room. I listened intently because I assumed we were going to get instruction on when we could take our blindfolds off, and I was desperately wanting to see where we were.

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Authors note:

As said in the description this is a not really that short, short story but I thought I'd share it here cuz why not. I hope you guys like it and I'll post more soon!