Happy Halloween!
So, here’s the result of my efforts at a week-long story. I was talking to Vanilla over the weekend and asked him if he had any guesses as to what I would be writing, and he thought I’d take the pragmatic approach – write something a bit shorter, maybe based on a real television show so that I had more of a formula to follow, so that it would be less taxing, given the self-imposed time limit…
Instead of that, which would have been sensible, I’ve damn-near killed myself writing this monstrosity of a story. It’s not based on a TV show, and it’s about twice the length of my previous efforts… the only thing I’ve cut corners on here is the editing and tidying up that I would normally do, simply because I was determined to do this in a week and put it up on Halloween, and I’m fast running out of time. It’s largely inspired by what I thought was a great idea for a Halloween themed story and PML’s thread about old favourites, which reminded me of some the WAM epics like the Industrial Zone and Slimecore stories, and in some ways, this is my attempt at something similar, albeit with a different agenda.
To anyone that hasn’t read it yet, this is a follow-up to When Tori Forgot… because people seemed to like those characters and wanted to see Tori take a stab at getting her own back on Izzy.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoy. I’m going to have a stiff drink and then lie down in a darkened room…
“Welcome back to The Breakfast Show on 105.4 Radio Neptune, I’m Tori and this is Johnny,”
“Morning!”
“And it’s 8:09 on October 31st. No sightings of ghosts or ghouls yet, but it’s still early, so we will keep you posted with that on our spook watch, and you can follow it live through our Facebook and Twitter feeds.”
“Can ghosts even go out in the daylight, or am I just thinking of vampires?”
“I think that’s just vampires.”
“And some zombies, I think. I guess it depends on the director. Maybe there’s a horror buff out there that can clue us in?”
“We can only hope! Now, we’re asking you about your plans for tonight – are you a Happy Halloweener, out for fun and mischief, or do you just stay in, barricade the doors and treat the whole thing like a bad horror move come to life? We want to know what you’re up to, so get in touch through the usual ways and let us know what you’re doing, especially if you’re doing anything special for the kids during half-term that you want to advertise.”
“What about you, Tori? Got any plans for tonight?”
“Well, Jonny, I’m out with the girls – or should that be ghouls? We’re doing one of those escape rooms that everyone seems to be doing. I’ve never done one before, but it’s Halloween themed and I’m sure it’ll be a good laugh!”
“So I might be presenting on my own tomorrow if you don’t get out before the zombies get you?”
“You should be so lucky! No, Johnny, if I get turned into a zombie, you’ll be the first person I hunt down!”
“How am I going to tell the difference? Groaning, unable to talk properly, shambling walk, dead look behind the eyes… that’s just you before you’ve had your coffee.”
“Like you’re one to talk!”
So, it’s Halloween. A time for tricks and treats, a night when magic does happen and things you thought only happened in fiction can come true. It’s a night where you have to be on guard, as nothing is quite what it seems…
Of course, some parts of it are quite mundane, and sitting in traffic on King Street is one of them. It doesn’t matter how you’re dressed or what day it is, King Street is one of the main roads through Whitton and it’s busy from morning through to night, only easing in the small hours when no-one is around anyway. Izzy and I were sat in the car, on the way to the escape room, which was being hosted out of one of the old industrial units down by the train station, where rent was low and space was in abundance. Many of the old warehouses had already been converted, mostly into big retail units or offices, but some were still vacant. The escape room was a pop up job for Halloween, but there had been a lot of demand for one previously, so with a bit of luck, they might become a more permanent feature.
As this was for Halloween, it ran for about a week either side of today, but tickets for Halloween night were like gold dust and it was by pure luck that Rhiannon had managed to get us booked in. We were right at the end of the night, with our session due to start at nine. It wasn’t exactly ideal, considering that I have to get up early in the morning for a living, but sometimes you just have to suffer through in the name of good fun, and neither Izzy nor I have ever done an escape room before, so it’s going to be a new experience for us. Plus, it’s been a while since we got the five of us out together, especially just as the five of us. The last time I saw Joanna was when she got back from her honeymoon and that was almost three months ago now, so it’ll be great to see everyone together and to do something a bit different to just meeting up for dinner and drinks.
Rhiannon had kept her cards close to her chest on just what the escape room would involve. It was called “Mutant Madness”, she’d let us know that much, and that they had advised us to wear practical clothing that we weren’t too attached to, as the themed room involved a bit of “Halloween goo” that shouldn’t stain, but they wouldn’t be liable for destruction of clothing if it happened. We had also been told to wear something practical, given the physical nature of some of the tasks, so, naturally, I was dressed as a zombie airline hostess. You see, despite the common sense regarding practical costumes, we’d already agreed that our theme was going to be “unusual zombie costumes”, taking the trend of adding the word zombie on to a normal Halloween uniform costume, like zombie nurse and zombie schoolgirl to its illogical end. The challenge was to come up with the most unconventional zombie costume, far from the nurses and police officers that were seen all too regularly, but at the same time, no-one wanted to risk ruining anything fancy, so Izzy’s costume had been assembled from items she already owned, and I’d picked mine up second hand on eBay, with both of us just adding some grey face and body paint and a few scars for the zombie element.
We eventually made it to the old industrial area on the outskirts of town, before parking up and heading to the entrance. There were a couple of teenagers stood at the door, dressed as more conventional zombies and our costumes seemed to get a smile out of them as they looked up at us. “Hello ladies, welcome to Whitton Massey’s premiere Escape Room! Which themed room are you pair booked in for tonight?”
“Mutant Madness,” I replied, “The booking would have been made under the name of Rhiannon Jones.”
“Ah, great,” he replied, “Two of your group are already here. Just head inside and take a left, then you’re right down the bottom of the hall. The room name’s on the door, so just keep walking until you find it.”
We nodded our thanks and stepped inside, listening to the sound of my high heels clipping on the corridor’s corrugated metal floor as we made our way to the room. In full, my costume was red high heels heels, bare legs and a short red skirt, with a matching red blazer over a low cut white blouse and a red cap, with my hair left straight and loose. The costume had a bit of wear and tear, hence the bargain price, but for something I was going to “zombie up” anyway, it was perfect. Izzy’s costume was thrown together from clothes she already owned, consisting of black three-quarter length lycra leggings, a tight hot pink lycra vest top, wrist bands, head band and a pair of trainers. She was dressed as a zombie aerobics instructor, which was just her old gym gear in truth, but it ticked the box for being an unusual zombie costume. We were both quite pleased with our outfits, and though I don’t doubt that both costumes have been done before somewhere, I think we’re picking up a fair few points for novelty value – how often do you see either in the usual Halloween costume shops?
We could hear noises around us and the former warehouse echoed like nothing else, which probably added to the creepy Halloween feeling. We could hear screams and squeals, roars and shuffling. The first door we saw was for “Alien Assault”, but then the other doors we passed were unmarked as we worked our way down to the end to find our room.
“Mutant Madness,” scoffed Izzy, a small smirk on her face. “Where do they come up with this crap?”
I just smiled back and opened the door as we entered a dimly-lit waiting room.
“There you two are!” shouted Rhiannon, standing up and huffing. She had her dark brown hair tied up in a very tight little bun, which wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary for her. “Trust you to be late, Tori, how on earth did you ever wind up presenting a breakfast show on the radio?”
“No-one can see her on the radio, she doesn’t have to get dressed,” replied Joanna as she stood and moved towards me for a hug. “She spends ages messing with that bloody hair of hers, that’s why she’s always so late.”
I hugged her back and then swapped places with Izzy to give Rhiannon a hug. She smiled and stepped back, “So… zombie airline hostess for you, red, and zombie gym instructor for Izzy?”
“Not bad,” I replied, “Though Izzy’s technically an aerobics instructor, but I think we can let you off.” I rubbed my chin and sized up Joanna’s outfit, “Hard, hat, hi-vis jacket, jeans,” I leaned around to look at Jo’s back, “No arse hanging out, so you loose a few points but you’re clearly a zombie builder!” I then turned my attention to Rhiannon and sucked the air through my teeth. She was dressed in dark brown pumps, black tights, a brown tartan skirt and cream blouse, with a green cardigan and over-sized glasses on a chain around her neck. “Some kind of zombie.. librarian?”
Rhiannon huffed, “No. Izzy?”
Izzy tapped her chin thoughtfully as she bit her bottom lip and hummed. “Uh,” she murmured, “Zombie historian maybe?”
She sighed and shook her head. “I can’t believe neither of you got it. Nor did Jo, you’re all rubbish.”
“Zombie teacher was my guess,” said Jo, before shrugging her shoulders.
Before Rhiannon could answer, the door swung open to reveal a truly wonderful sight. Stood before us all now was tall, athletic woman, with sun-kissed skin, beach-blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes, full lips and the most incredible pair of natural breasts I’ve ever seen. More than that, though, she was wearing a red one-piece swimsuit, with flip-flops, a yellow zip-up hoodie and a plastic whistle on a cord around her neck.
“Holy Hell Lena,” said Rhiannon, breaking the silence. “Look at you.”
“I’m a zombie lifeguard,” she said, before shrugging her shoulders and shutting the door behind her. “…zombie accountant?”
Rhiannon huffed and rolled her eyes as we all took turns to hug Lena, with Izzy perhaps spending a little too long with her face pressed against the blonde’s phenomenal assets before I had to pull her away. “So, a Baywatch fan?” I asked.
“I guess it’s true,” nodded Joanna, “All Germans really do love David Hasselhoff…”
Lena rolled her eyes and folded her arms, an act that made her already enviable bust only even more impressive. “Guys,” she said with that cool tone that let us know she wasn’t too amused. Lena was the newest member of our group, and she was German, and her accent gave it away, but for all of our ribbing, she was very game, very spontaneous and she was always up for a drink, so she fitted in very well with the rest of us and was frequently the instigator of rowdiness and bad behaviour when we went for a night out.
After about five minutes of hanging around, we were approached by a twenty-something girl dressed as a witch and a slightly older back guy, maybe in his late twenties, dressed as an old-school vampire, complete with glow-in-the-dark fake teeth. “Hello ladies,” he said, managing to talk quite clearly despite the mouthpiece, “Zombie builder? That’s a new one.” He smirked and then looked to Lena, “Zombie life guard, zombie airline hostess, zombie fitness instructor and… uh…” He shook his head, “Zombie frumpy secretary?”
Rhiannon gasped, putting on a mixture of mock and real indignation at the comment, but our host fortunately had enough charm to just flash a smile and get away with it. His witch partner squinted, “Zombie.. Conservative MP?”
“Now I’m just getting offended!” huffed Rhiannon as she folded her arms indignantly.
The vampire chuckled, “Still, I love it when people make an effort, especially on Halloween. I’m sure you ladies will have a great time, but firstly, we need to run through a few bits of housekeeping.”
He then explained his name was Chris, and his companion was Abby, and the two of them would be our game masters for tonight. They would be overseeing things and might offer the odd hint, but were there as facilitators rather than anything else. They went over the usual, with warnings about epilepsy, people with heart defects, pregnancy and so on, reminding us that at no point would we be put in any genuine danger… the usual. He also took any phones, cameras or watches too, so that no-one could try to cheat once inside.
After his speech was over, Chris flashed his cocky grin once more and turned to Rhiannon, “So, who’s your patsy tonight?”
“Patsy?” I asked, before Lena echoed the same sentiment. “What are you on about?”
Chris’ eyes widened and he turned around with a bemused grin on his face. “You never said anything huh, Rhiannon?” he shrugged his shoulders, “Well, this is a less conventional escape room, in that you’ll all be working together on some level, but four of you will start off trying to escape, so that you can save the fifth member from a gruesome destiny. The fifth will be trapped, unable to save herself, but she will be able to see how the rest of you are getting on. She might even be able to help a bit, but essentially, it’s up to you guys to save her from becoming just another of Dr. Braun’s experiments!”
Abby smirked, “So, who’s your patsy?”
“It’s got to be Rhiannon,” said Joanna. “She tried to stitch us up, so it has to be her.”
“Hold on,” said Rhiannon, “I arranged this and paid for it, and so far, only Lena’s give me her share. That’s why I’m so confident it’ll be one of you that-”
I wasn’t going to hang around, so I’d already started rooting around in my handbag and cut Rhi off by thrusting my money in front of her face. Jo quickly followed suit as Izzy buried her face in her hands. “Shit,” she muttered, “I didn’t bring my purse… Tori said she’d pay for any drinks or anything like that tonight.”
“And I will,” I replied gladly, “But for tonight, you’re our patsy!”
Izzy sighed and let her head hang. “Fine, fine, bully the youngest one into it.”
“That’s what we are doing,” I retorted, before putting my arm around her shoulders. “So, we’ve got our patsy sorted – what now?”
“You come with me,” replied Chris as Abby opened up a door out of the room. “And may I say again, ladies, I do appreciate the efforts you’ve gone to with your Halloween costumes.” He smiled and locked eyes with Lena as she passed him, “Especially you, zombie life guard.” Lena just smiled and flipped her hair as she brought up the rear of our group.
We followed Abby down the corridor until she stopped in front of a doorway. “Patsy!” she shouted, much to Izzy’s chagrin as she moved front and centre, being led through the door by Abby first, while the rest of us were left to follow.
What awaited us took my breath away.
We entered a circular, domed room, full of metal floors and grills, with flashing lights and metal panels all over the wall, making it look like something from an old science-fiction movie. One wall was adorned with nine monitors, presumably to allow Izzy to keep watch over us, and the whole room was basked in a somewhere eerie green glow from the overhead lights, but all of that paled in comparison to the room’s centrepiece…
In the middle of the floor was a raised vat of bright, glowing green gunge. It was about three metres in diameter and the gunge bubble and splattered of its own volition. The vat came to maybe a metre above ground level, but it was hard to tell how deep it went below ground, though either way, it held plenty of bubbling green goo.
“That…” muttered Izzy as she seemed to freeze up on the spot.
“Yes?” asked Abby, grinning cruelly. “That’s right, patsy, it’s slime and it’s all for you!”
Izzy groaned and hid her face behind her hands, her cheeks blazing bright red as she stared intently at the vat of gunge. I, meanwhile, was hanging back and hoping I wasn’t smiling too much! It had been a little while since Izzy and I had our private fun in the NHP studio, and I’d promised revenge, but I’d never gone anywhere with the idea. All of a sudden, the stars were aligning for me and now Izzy was going to be risking a very messy gunge bath, and all I would have to do was make sure we didn’t win. It’d be easy – after all, these things are meant to be challenging, so I shouldn’t have any problem making out that it’s really challenging and that I’m struggling with it, all just to run down the clock until bath time! I bit my bottom lip, staring at Izzy’s pert bum through the back of her lycra leggings and imagined how she’d look covered in green gunk and thinking about how much fun it would be to take my revenge here and now, with three of our closest friends on hand to watch it happen!
Abby moved over towards the vat, and a small set of stairs at the back that led up to the top, where was a platform at the back of the tank. She beckoned Izzy to follow her and, reluctantly, the brunette did as we all moved in closer for a good look. “Take a seat,” said Abby, pointing to the only object on the balcony – something akin to a nightmarish dentist’s seat with wrist straps. “This is where you’ll be trapped, waiting to be dunked in our vat of mutant-making muck… let’s hope your friends get you out in time, right?
Izzy turned to look at us and I felt her eyes boring into me. “Yeah,” she muttered quietly as I gave her a playful wave.
“So, this is the end game,” said Chris, holding his arms out wide to show off the room. “If you make it back here, then you’re well on your way to winning! Now, I did send Rhiannon the back story, but just as a reminder, the five of you have all been abducted by the nefarious Dr. Braun, who intends to mutate you all into his loyal legion of unholy abominations, and dear old patsy is up next. The vat is controlled by one of Dr. Braun’s machines, and the four of you will have to escape your prison and shut down his machine to save the world! No pressure, right? And, of course, if you manage to do it in under an hour, then you’ll still have time to save your friend from a seriously slimy ending.”
“You better had save me!” shouted Izzy as she pointed down at us, me especially. “If I mutate, you’ll all be sorry!”
“Right,” said Chris, as if Izzy’s outburst was about par for the course, “Abby will help our patsy into place and the rest of you can come with me and we’ll get you in position, too. Stay close, too, as it’s dark in this next bit.”
“Hey, hold on!” shouted Abby. “Health and safety – any of you wearing heels or anything around your neck that might be a choking hazard will need to take them off. We’ll keep them all safe, but we don’t want any sprained ankles or worse if we can help it!”
Chris nodded, “That’s you trolley dolly and… boring geography teacher… heels off.”
Rhiannon and I obliged, while Lena also took off her flip-flops, whistle and hoodie too. “It’ll be easier to move without them,” she commented as she handed them to Chris, standing before him in just a red one-piece that certainly put a smile on his face. Rhi also took off the over-sized glasses as Jo and I removed our hats too,all while we watched Abby helping Izzy into place.
“What about my shoes?” asked Izzy.
“What about them?” replied Abby.
“I don’t want to ruin them in the gunge.”
“Oh,” Abby said, smirking, “Well, If you don’t trust your friends to save you in time-”
“I’ll take them off,” she quickly replied, removing her shoes and then sitting place to let Abby strap her in, tapping her dainty toes on the seat’s footrest. “It’s cold,” she muttered.
“The gunge is warmer, want to go for a dip?” asked Abby with a wicked grin.
“No, no,” Izzy replied quickly, before forcing a smile. “I’m good, thanks!”
“Right, come on, with me,” called out Chris as he waved us over to an exit on the far side of the room and a set of stairs. “You’ll see the patsy before long, but she may not be as you remember her if the evil Doctor Braun has his way!”
“Bye Izzy!” I called out, waving and blowing her a kiss.
“Bye Izz!” shouted Lena, “Good luck!”
Izzy blinked, “Shouldn’t I be wishing you guys good luck?”
I laughed out loud and shook my head, “Seriously? Take a look down, babes, who do you really think needs luck on their side more?”
She sighed loudly and hung her head. “I hate you all!”
“Love you! Bye!”
—
Five or so minutes passed and we were all in place. Chris was to be looking after us for the duration of the session, if only so that he could continue checking out Lena, something that he made not attempt to hide. Abby would stay with Izzy in the other room. We started in a very dark room, almost pitch-black, but not quite, and all had one ankle chained to a weight in the middle of the room. Sat at the four points of a compass to each other, our only light source was a narrow shaft of blue light in the middle of the room, pointing down at the central column where all of our chains were tied.
Chris hung off for a few moments before letting us start and, as I blinked, it dawned on me that this was to allow our eyes to adjust to the darkness. With each passing second, I could see a little better, first following the chain to the central block, then to Lena and Rhiannon at the sides of the room and finally to Joanna sat opposite, with Chris stood just to the side of her. We were allowed to look around, but not to move or speak until the game started, so I took in as much as I could – which wasn’t a whole lot. The floor was cold and metallic, making me jealous of both Rhi and Jo, who had tights and shoes respectively to at least protect their feet somewhat from the cold floor. Maybe I should have paid more attention to the “practical clothing” part of the invite.
“Alright ladies, you have an hour, starting… now. Good luck!” said Chris as we all heard a shrill beep followed by some haunting techo-synth music starting up. “If the music ends, your game is over,” he added as the four of us stood up. Lena and Jo moved to the middle of the room instinctively, standing under the skylight and over the weight.
“Reckon we can lift it?” asked Jo. “One way to find out, I guess?”
Lena nodded and the pair started trying to lift the weight, but with no luck. I moved closer too and tried to help, but it didn’t make any difference at all. “It’s not budging,” I said, before giving up and stepping back. “It’s probably fixed to the floor,” I added, and then crouched down to study the point where our four chains were connected to the block. There was a metal rod through all four chains, buried deep into the block, with the end tightly coiled, so that the chains couldn’t just be pulled over the top of it. A quick tug suggested that it would move, but something at the bottom was holding it in place.
“Should I try?” asked Lena.
“No,” called out Rhiannon, who hadn’t ventured far from her starting position. “They want us to find the right answer, so you should never need to force things – if it doesn’t come easily, it means it’s either not going to come at all,” she paused for dramatic effect, “Or it’s part of a puzzle.”
So we got to work on following Rhi’s orders. She’d done a couple before, one with Jo, in fact, and she’d managed to escape each time, so she had enough experience to make me trust her. She was also naturally bossy, so barking orders came easily to her. I guess that’s what having three children under the age of eight does to a person!
It took a little while to find the answer, but Lena stumbled upon the solution by luck more than anything. She had grown frustrated with the lack of progress made scouring the room and returned to the central weight, deciding to try brute-forcing it again. She had lifted her chained leg on to the top of the column for leverage so that she could try pulling the rod free and, as she struggled and moved about, Rhiannon spotted a glint coming from the clasp around Lena’s ankle. It turns out that each of the restraint had something like a prismatic rod running through them and lining them up in the shaft of light would cause the clasp to release. We weren’t being told how long we had, so we didn’t know if we’d taken too long or got to it quickly, but we were free from our shackles at least, and the next challenge was to get out of the room now that we could move around more freely.
We immediately began inspecting the corners of the room, as these were the parts we couldn’t reach earlier and, sure enough, our next clue was there. Each corner had something akin to a fire poker propped up, and, bringing these back to the centre of the room, we found four holes in the top of the weight that could be depressed and, with all four depressed at the same time, the weight clunked and sank down into the floor, revealing a tunnel leading down further into the darkness.
“I guess this is it,” I said, looking for confirmation. “I mean, like Rhi said, it’ll be obvious enough if we find it…”
“And this is pretty obvious,” replied Lena as we all stared down at the abyss, none of us quite wanting to go first. “Tori should go,” she added, putting her arm around my shoulder. “After all, it’s your Izzy we’re trying to save… or do you want a mutant girlfriend?”
I sighed and shook my head. “Fine,” I muttered, stepping into the tunnel and lowering myself down to crawl through the passageway. It was pitch-black inside the chamber and it had been slicked with some sort of watery slime that didn’t make it any more difficult, but did add to the unpleasantness of the whole thing and made me think back to the funfair Haunted Houses of my childhood. I crawled through on my stomach, for what felt like it might have been a minute or two, before I came to a grate above my head and a dead end in front of me. Again, logic dictated that I should go through the grate and, while it wasn’t too heavy, it was still made out of metal, so moving it was a little easier said than done. Still, I thought, my best odds of getting Izzy dunked would be to stall at moments like these, so I pushed it around, making a few scraping noises to add to my cause.
“Are you alright down there?” asked Joanna. “Do you need help?”
I probably hadn’t wasted enough time, in truth, but I couldn’t really let them know. “I’m alright,” I shouted back, but there’s a grate here and it’s pretty heavy. Maybe Lena could help me move it?”
“Coming!” she shouted and, a minute or so later, I found myself pressed up against the wall as she appeared in front of me. “You could have warned me that it was wet down here,” she said, and I wondered if she could see my grin in the darkness.
She moved the grate off with relative ease and hauled herself out in the next room, before helping me up. “You need to spend more time in the gym,” she commented, lifting the grate again to check its weight as Jo and Rhi made their way through the tunnel to join us.
“Yeah,” I said, shrugging, “I guess I’ve not been on the weights much recently.”
“That was a bit gross,” said Rhiannon as she emerged out of the tunnel to join us. “Thanks for the warning.”
“You’re welcome,” replied Lena with a smirk. She wasn’t so above it all herself, clearly.
The next room was considerably better-lit than the first one, so we could see much more easily in here, and there was quite a bit more for us to see in here, too. This room appeared to be storage area, filled with shelving units, crates and bits of wood, with pipework and metal propped up all around us. There was an obvious door at the far end of the room, singled out by an overhead light, so we tried that first and, to our surprise, found that it opened. It led to a moment of paranoia and delay as we speculated on whether or not it was too easy, but under Rhi’s instructions, we pressed on to the next room.
And that’s when we caught out first glance of Izzy in a while. From where we were, we could see down through a window, overlooking the downstairs stage where my dear girlfriend was poised, all ready for a plunge in the gunge. The others moved straight over to start banging on the window, trying to catch her attention, but for just a moment, I stared down at the sight of her over the green goo and felt butterflies in my stomach. Was it turning me on? I knew Izzy was into it, she’d made that clear before, but was I coming around to it too, or was it just a giddy thrill from knowing I’d get my revenge? However messy she’d made me before, that had just been us two, in private, this was going to happen with an audience and, while she might not be naked, she wasn’t exactly covered up, so she was sure to feel it get everywhere. Yes, it was just excitement at seeing that troublesome brunette get her just desserts.
“Come on guys,” said Rhiannon, “We’ve got to save her… however we do that.” She rubbed the back of her neck, “We still need to stop that machine, don’t we?”
“We need to find it first,” I added, taking one last look at Izzy sat over the muck, before turning around to face the rest of the room.
We were in some kind of futuristic science fiction laboratory. There were a few work benches lined up against the walls, some whiteboards and a few plastic beakers and flasks scattered around. Undoubtedly, they were meant to be glass, but health and safety had overruled that one. In the middle of the room was a well, filled with murky green goop, not so dissimilar to the stuff Izzy was sat above. “I don’t see a way out,” I said, noting that the only door in the room was the one we’d come through.
Lena sat down on the edge of the well and dipped her finger into the green gunk with a slight giggle. “I can think of one way down,” she said, wiping her finger against her top.
“You might be on to something,” said Rhi, as she grimaced at the thought. “We’d need to get the slime out first though.”
“What’s that at the bottom?” asked Jo, pointing to the side of the well, where a something was protruding. “It looks like a valve or something,” she said as she stooped down to check it out. “Maybe we can drain the slime out somehow?”
“We’d need a pump,” said Rhi, “And some pipes, but there were loads back in that storage room…”
“On it,” I called, grabbing Lena’s hand and dragging her back into the storage room with me. “Right, grab all the pipes you can and keep your eyes open for something that could be a pump.”
A few minutes passed until Lena and I returned to the room with a clutch of pipes each. Various lengths and widths, some were solid plastic pipes, like those used for plumbing, and others were flexible, more like the kind of you get in a vacuum cleaner. Rhi and Jo had been looking around the room for a pump and had found something in the far corner that had a similar valve to the one on the slime well, so things were looking encouraging. We laid out the pipes on the floor, some straight pieces, some corners, and set to work on finding the right size to fit the valve on the well.
It didn’t take too long to find a fit, and a quick check confirmed it plugged into the valve on the far side of the room too.
“Right,” said Rhiannon, “Joanna and I will work on the pipes we have here, but we’ll need more than these to reach the corner, so you two need to go back and grab more.”
“So… leave you and the builder to do the plumbing?” I replied, “Makes sense.”
“Oh!” shouted Joanna, having a genuine eureka moment. “You’re a zombie architect, aren’t you?”
Rhiannon’s weary sigh said more than words ever could, and Lena and I quickly made our way back into the storage room once more. More pipes were gathered and brought back to the room, to find Jo worked from the well and Rhi working from the pump, with a gap in the middle. Lena and I set the pipes down and started working too. They could only fit one way around, with one end larger than the other, and then they twisted to fit, so confidence was high that we were on the way to getting this up and running.
Except… draining this well was obviously a part of our greater task, and doing so would bring us one step closer to saving Izzy from getting dunked. I was having a lot of fun, working as a team, solving puzzles, and it was easy to get caught up in the thrill of it, especially when the others were giving it their all, but I really wanted to see Izzy get dunked. Was it petty? Was it wrong for me to want to make us all lose, just to see her get dunked? I’m sure I could find a way to mess her up too, but this was just too perfect – a dunk tank full of the stuff and three of our best friends on hand to see it too? I was facing a crisis of conscience, so I just tried to slow it down.
“Tori!” shouted Jo, looking across at me, “You’re trying to screw it in backwards!”
“Oh!” I replied, shaking my head, “Sorry! I’m rushing.” I paused, took a deep breath and then turned the pipe around, screwing it up the right way. Perhaps I had wasted a few seconds, but I couldn’t make it too obvious what I was doing.
Rhi and Lena had finished their bit and had gone back to the contraption in the corner. Letting Jo take over, I moved to join them too. It was a large cylindrical unit, a bit like a giant coffee urn from a caterer’s, and it was embedded into the wall, with a pressure gauge on the front of it. Running off to either side were smaller pipes, leading to a pair of crank-handles. Lena took one and Jo took the other, turning them in unison, in the same direction, but as Rhi and I watched the gauge, nothing seemed to happen. “What’s wrong?” called out Lena. “Why isn’t it draining?”
“The bar’s only half-full,” replied Rhi. “We aren’t getting enough pressure.” She groaned, “Alright, everyone spread out, there must be more cranks or something, we’ve just got to find them!”
So we did, and a few seconds later, we found out the problem.
“Aw, shit,” called out Joanna. “Over here,” she called from the opposite corner of the room, where she’d moved some boxes. “We’ve got another pump thing, and another valve.”
“So we have to build more pipes?” asked Lena. “Was there another valve on the well?”
“No,” she replied, “Just the one. We checked for that, which is why when we found one pump, we were so sure. Now we’ll need a T-shaped bit of pipe too, and some more lengths.”
I felt a little giddy. This was wasting time and it wasn’t my fault. “Why don’t you and Rhi get on with what we have here, and Lena and I can go get more pipes?” I asked, looking to the German. “I don’t remember seeing any T-shapes though.”
“I did,” she replied with a smile. “They just didn’t seem relevant at the time. There was a box full of them!”
So Lena and I went back to the storage room. She immediately went for the box of connectors and I set about grabbing more pipes. Having worked with them, it was a little easier to spot the size we wanted, plus they all seemed to be the same shade of light grey, but it was still easier to grab a bunch of pipes and let the others sort them out. We returned to the room to find Joanna working on the new contraption, having got a few pipes hooked up to it already, while Rhi was assembling some straight pipes to be slotted into the finished pipework.
“Great,” called out Rhi, seeing the connector. “Does it fit the pipes we’re using?” she asked, holding up her straight for Lena to confirm the two were the right size.
“I’ll put this in place,” said Lena, leaving me to start connecting up pipes with the others. She went back to the well and knelt down, so she could start disconnecting the corner piece we’d put in, to replace it with the three-way joint.
“Oh, that’s gross,” she complained a moment later, holding up the corner which now had some gunge inside of it… or had had some gunge inside of it, most of which was now on Lena’s hands and thighs where she was sat with the corner still dripping. “We got some slime out of the well,” she added, before sticking her tongue out and dropping the corner piece.
“At least it works,” I called out, smirking slightly. The other two couldn’t help smirking either, and I wondered if they’d deliberately left that job, just in case it was a messy one. Still, Lena carried on working and fitted in the connector, as we all hooked up our bits of pipework to finish the job. She only then started trying to wipe her thighs clean, by which point the goop had started to become a bit stickier and tackier, much to her disgust. Pipework done, Jo and Rhi went to the far side as Lena and I took up our positions and all four of us started working the crank-handles, turning them in unison.
“It’s working,” shouted Rhi as she checked her pressure gauge.
“Working here, too!” I called back as the four of us could hear some gurgling noises coming from the middle of the room, along with rattling in the cylinders, too. I wasn’t expecting them to actually drain the slime properly, but for all the world, it sounded like that was what we were doing. It took a bit of time to fully drain the well, but we knew when we were done as all four handles stopped working simultaneously.
Returning to the centre, we could now see that the well led down to a diagonal chute, and it was covered in slime still, even if we’d drained the bulk of it out. “That looks grim,” said Rhiannon, shaking her head.
“Ugh, such babies,” said Lena as she stepped up into the lip of the well. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she said, grinning for a second, as she stepped down, pressing her bare foot against the bottom of the chute with an audible squelch. “Mm, lovely,” she said, her voice coated in as much sarcasm as the chute was coated in slime, before taking a deep breathe and sending herself down the chute. She gave a bit of a squeal, presumably from a mix of the descent and the slime and at the bottom, she landed with a bit of a damp squelch and a thud, though we couldn’t be entirely sure from the top.
“Is it safe?” I called out.
“Don’t go yet,” she replied, “I need to open the door first.” There was a moment’s silence, followed by what I assumed to be some colourful German language. “I need a key!”
“A key?” repeated Joanna. “So she’s stuck down there?”
Rhiannon sighed. “I should have thought about this. If we’re making a vacuum to drain out the slime, then it must be sealed at the bottom too, or the slime would have drained out of there. Or the entire first-floor is flooded, either way.”
“Not helping!” shouted Lena back up the tunnel. “It’s not a proper key. It’s a star-shaped item, maybe the size of your hand. There’s a slot for it to press into on a red panel.”
So the three of us set about searching for such an item. Jo and I went back to the storage area while Rhi started checking the lab area. There was plenty to search, boxes, crates, shelves… all sorts of things, but as I began rooting around in a box full of straw, I found exactly what Lena needed – a red metal star. Of course, this was a perfect opportunity to slow things down… so I put it back, pushed it over to the other side of the rack and pretended to carry on looking.
Rhi soon put her head around the door. “I’ve gone through every drawer that opens and every cupboard, there’s nothing in there,” she said, sounding just slightly out of breath. “And Lena’s in trouble – she says that the chute’s starting to fill up again, she’s already ankle-deep in slime!”
“Well, I’m checking this left set of racks,” said Jo, “And Tori’s doing the ones on the right. Do you want to go down the middle and just double-check? I’ve been pulling stuff out and just leaving it on the shelves, so you can see if I’ve missed a box.”
Well, that was that. I carried on searching but knew it wouldn’t take long for Rhi to find the red star and, sure enough she did. “I can’t believe you missed it, Tori,” she said, shaking her head.
“Sorry,” I replied, “I just through it was straw and moved.”
“Good job I’m here,” she huffed and turned around. “Oh!” she exclaimed “Sacks!”
“Sacks?” I replied, moving back over to her.
“Empty sacks! We can ride these down and save getting covered in slime,” she said, picking up one from a pile on the floor. “Like a sort of toboggan thing!”
“Genius,” replied Joanna as she did the same and then handed me one.
“We’re here,” called out Rhi, “And I found the key. Somehow Tori completely missed it. I’m starting to wonder if the ginger hair’s just a dye job to cover up her blondeness.”
“Hey!” replied Lena, “I’m blonde, and I’m almost up to my knees, so if you don’t hurry, I’ll have green hair!”
Rhi threw the key down into the chute and it clanged about before reaching the bottom with a splash that told us Lena wasn’t kidding. There was the sound of sloshing and scrambling, all of which echoed up the chute, but a few moments later, we heard a clang. “I’m out,” shouted Lena, “You can come down now!”
So Jo went first, placing her sack down and sitting on it, sliding down to the bottom, followed by Rhi and I was last to go down. I followed the example I’d seen – placing the sack down, stepping onto it and then sitting down. The top of the chute was level, so even if the slime made it a bit slippery, it wasn’t like the sack would slide out from underneath me, so I was able to lower myself into position easily enough. I stretched out my bare legs, letting my heels rest in a patch of slimy goop on the side of the chute with little smile before touching some of it with my hand. It brought back a lot of strong memories of that fateful night a few months ago, and it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant sensation, either. Cold and slimy, yes, but maybe it was because of a sense of nostalgia, thinking back to that night, that it somehow didn’t feel nearly as gross to me as it did to everyone else. I pushed off, traveling down the dark chute and feeling bits of slime flying up and splattering against my legs and even a bit on my face too.
Landing at the bottom, I was on another flat section, and there was a bit of room to get up before reaching the doorway. The floor here was thick with slime, which carried on as a puddle in the next room, spreading out from the door that Lena had already opened. As I felt the gunge ooze between my toes and squelch under my soles, I couldn’t help smirking. This did feel a little more gross, and immediately my mind raced to thoughts of Izzy being dunked and having to feel this all over her body.
The sight at the bottom was something to behold too – Lena’s back and bum were coated in slime, there was plenty streaked in her hair, and her feet and shins were covered from where she had been stood in the rising slime earlier. She was trying to dry herself with one of the sacks when I landed at the bottom, and while she she was smiling, you could tell she wasn’t enjoying the sensation.
“Looking good,” I called out, smirking. “Green’s a good look for you!”
She huffed and threw the sack at me, which narrowly missed. “It’s so gross, and this thing,” she said, motioning to her red swimsuit, “Stupid thing rode up my ass on the way down. I never want to do that again.”
The room we were in had a simple puzzle, with four pressure panels on the floor needing to be pressed simultaneously to open the lock. The floor panels were all varying shades of black, white, grey and slate blue, but only four of them were the same shade of grey. Three were easy enough to find, but one was underneath the slimy puddle, though some clever use of the sacks helped clear that up so that we could open the lock.
The room afterwards was also quite straightforward, and it seemed like we were making up the time we’d lost upstairs, with the pipes. We hadn’t found the machine to shut down yet, or a way to save Izzy, but given that we were snaking back along the ground floor and under the rooms we’d been in, there couldn’t have been a whole lot left. Chris was still following us, though he clearly had some back access, as he hadn’t come down the chute or the tunnel, and he remained a silent spectator. He did check his watch from time to time, but I could never manage to see what it said.
The next room we entered downstairs had an elaborate set of cogs, that ran over all four walls, linked up to a large crank-handle beside the exit door. Several cogs were missing from the system, but they were easily located in a pile in the middle of the room. Under Rhi’s instructions, we all took a wall each and, as a cog would only fit in its proper position, we couldn’t put the wrong cog in the wrong place, so it was just a case of grabbing a handful and trying to fit them. We’d then dump any we couldn’t fit back in the middle of the floor and take a new batch.
Everyone dived in, grabbing some cogs and setting to work. I was starting to feel a little guilty now, the others were working hard and I was trying to sabotage that for my own gain when perhaps I should just be working hard. If it had been Rhi or one of the others on the dunk seat, I’d be giving it my all and I wouldn’t appreciate it if I found that one of the others had been trying to scupper my efforts, just to see Rhi get gunged. This was the last time I was going to do it, I told myself, as I picked up all the small cogs I could find and went to my wall. I fitted a couple and then dropped the pile to the floor. It made a bit of a noise as the others looked up, “Sorry, sorry!” I shouted.
“Rushing again?” asked Lena, her eyebrow cocked as she studied me.
“Don’t rush,” said Rhiannon calmly. “If you’re going slow, that’s fine, just make sure you get it right first time. If one of use finishes first, we can help you, that’s why it’s a team game.”
“Sure, sure,” I replied, gathering up all bar one of the cogs, which I nudged towards the darker corners of the room. “Sorry,” I added, though I did wonder just what I was apologising for, considering that I was deliberately withholding one of the cogs that someone else would need. I then returned to the middle, grabbed a fresh stack of cogs and went to work on my wall again.
It was Jo that finished first and she then came across to help me with my wall, as I was still behind.
“Help!,” shouted Rhi as she rooted through the cogs left in the middle of the room. “I’m missing one of those small cogs and there aren’t any left in the pile. Have you guys got one?”
I looked up, and found Lena staring back at me from across the room.
“Here,” I said, passing my clutch of cogs to Joanna, “I don’t have any small ones left, but you can finish the wall and I’ll help Rhi look for it… It probably rolled away when I dropped them earlier.” Lena caught my gaze again and raised her eyebrows as I look away and went to the opposite corner to where I’d kicked the cog. Dropping to my hands and knees, I began rooting around in the darker corner, finding it to be dusty, but unsurprisingly devoid of any cogs. “Nothing here,” I called out before moving to the opposite corner as the other three carried on fitting their cogs into the wall.
“Got it!” I shouted, moving across to Rhi as she pointed out the gap in the system. “Sorry.”
“This is what I meant about rushing,” she said quietly. “Don’t worry if you’re not as quick as the rest of us, just try not to make mistakes.”
It didn’t take long for the rest of the walls to be completed, and Jo then started turning the handle as the cogs spun and the door eventually slid to the side, allowing us into the next room.
“This is it!” shouted Rhiannon. “This has to be the control room,” she said, pointing to the various lights, buttons, consoles and so on. “And there’s Izzy!” she shouted, pointing to the window next to the door on the side of the room.
There was a large central column in the middle of the room, with four terminals around it, and in each corner of the room was a floor-to-ceiling tube filled with green slime. There were monitors on the walls, along with all the future-computer stuff that you got in every old sci-fi movie, full of blinking lights, toggles and the rest. The slime in the tubes was moving up constantly, and one of the monitors on the wall showed what appeared to be details for the vat – or at least, it had something that looked like the vat and a few numbers and percentages to the side of it.
“I’ll take the monitors,” shouted Rhi. “You lot check around the rest of the room for any other clues, but don’t touch anything. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a trigger here that would just dunk Izzy anyway. Poor thing.”
“I’ll check the terminals,” I called out, moving towards the nearest one and sitting down at it, as Jo and Lena began exploring the room.
“Guys… according to this, the vat is 82% ready,” said Rhi. “If my maths is right, that means we’ve got about ten minutes to save Izzy.” She turned back around, “Uh, 83% now. There aren’t any controls or buttons here, but there are four inputs to the vat and it’s still mixing. I guess it needs to be more mutate-y or something.”
“That’d be these four things then?” asked Lena, tapping one. “Huh, it’s warm,” she said.
Jo pressed her hand to one on the far wall, “Yeah, it is,” she replied, seeming just as surprised. “Wait, didn’t that goth woman say the gunge under Izzy was warm?”
“So these probably are being fed into the vat beneath Izz, but we still need to find a way to switch it off. That was the objective,” Rhiannon sighed, “Let’s just look for clues.”
“Well there’s something here,” I said. “I’ve been poking around on this terminal and there’s an option to shut down the machine, but it’s password-protected.”
“So we just need the password,” called it Jo. “Then let’s find it. This is a game, right? It’s going to be hidden somewhere in this room. Does it give you any ideas on what the password might be?”
“Just that it’s four digits long,” I replied. “And digits only, too,” I added, “I’ve only got a keypad with numbers here, no letters.”
“What’s on the other keyboards, Tori?” asked Rhiannon as she turned from the monitors.
“Looks like this one’s all letters,” I said, moving around the four terminals, “And this one’s just got four arrows – up, down, left, right, and the final one’s a load of shapes, like triangles and squiggly lines and circles and stuff…”
And so we all started scouring the room for the four codes required. We each took a wall and worked along, checking shelves, desks, posters and the like in hope of finding the codes we needed. Rhi was the first to find one, picking up the four-digit number code from a series of equations on one of the whiteboards. The alphabetical code was actually the name of a country, “Cuba”, which Lena identified as the only country on a world map with a red pin in it. I found the symbols, they were on a piece of paper sticking out of a book on some shelves near the door, and the last one was the directional code. Jo wasn’t having any luck on her wall and moved over to give Rhi a hand as Lena gave up on her wall and moved across to help me rummage through a load of papers in a filing cabinet. I was searching the top drawer, so she ducked down and began rooting through the bottom.
After a few moments, she stood up, holding a piece of orange paper in her hand and, sure enough, there was the code. Up, up, left, right. She then held it in front of her chest and turned so that the other two couldn’t see us, before speaking in a hushed tone to me. “Do you want this code, or do you want to see Izzy get slimed?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice going a little high as I protested, “Of course I want the code! We’re trying to win, aren’t we?”
“Are you sure?” she asked, her voice still hushed. “Only I know you’re quicker than you have been today. The others might not have noticed, but I get what you’re doing.” She glanced over her shoulder to check the other two were still busy and then looked back to me. “I get it, too, if I had the chance to slime any of my exes, I’d take it, I think it would be fun… it might even be a little hot, thinking about the power and domination, so, I ask again, do you want this code, or do you want me to hide it back in the drawer and say we can’t find it?”
I sighed. Lena was quite open sexually, and wasn’t afraid to discuss such things… maybe she would understand what I was going through, but did I have time to explain it all to her? “I’ve been conflicted,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “I’d love to see Izzy get messed up like that, just for fun, but I made my mind up already not to ruin this for the rest of you when you’re trying so hard.” With that, I snatched the paper from her hand and ran to the last terminal, before punching in the code.
“SYSTEM DISACTIVATED” announced the computer as the four columns of slime around the room drained and the monitors faded to black.
“That’s it,” cried Rhiannon. “Let’s get out of here and get Izzy down! Did anyone see what percentage the vat was at?”
“It was at 91 the last time I saw it,” replied Joanna as she rushed over to the exit, “Which doesn’t leave us long!” she added as she turned the handle and left the room first, with the rest of us following her out.
“Hey!” shouted Izzy as the door swung open and we emerged triumphantly from the control room back to where we parted ways. There were mutual high-fives and cheers as we sauntered over to the dunk tank where Izzy was still sat over the sludge. “Get me down from here!” she shouted, tugging at the wrist restraints, “I don’t want to be mutated!”
“Relax,” replied Joanna, “The machine’s been shut off, so you’re fine.”
“Then why is the music still playing?” asked Izzy.
There was a penny dropping moment as we all realised that the music was still playing, so ambient that it had gone unnoticed since it began. Jo started to move towards the stop only for Izzy to shake her head. “You need a key to undo the lock around my waist!”
“Not this again,” complained Rhiannon as she looked around. “There’s nothing here to search though – no shelves or boxes – so where’s the key? Did we miss it?”
“I was thinking this too,” said Izzy, “But look around – there’s a bunch of stuff on the walls, like over there, there’s something with some hand-prints, and then there’s one under the monitors that’s got a bunch of shapes in it.”
“So it’s puzzles within puzzles,” I said, before moving towards the monitors. “These are slots to fit shapes into! There’s a circle, a square, a triangle, a star, a heart, a diamond, a cross, a crescent moon, a V-shape and a ring.” I groaned, “We need ten things? This has to be where the key is!”
So we all fanned out to the various panels. The first one I found was a sequence puzzle. There were a dozen lights laid out in a grid, and when I hit start, they flashed in a pattern that I had to repeat. After three different patterns, and three successes, I was rewarded by a panel opening up to reveal a blue plastic cross. Rushing over to the monitors, I plugged it in, just as Rhi arrived with a blue triangle. “Two down!” she shouted.
Behind us we heard a yelp and turned to see Joanna being sprayed in the face by a thing stream of green goop. She spluttered and wiped her face, “Wasn’t expecting that,” she commented and then shook her head. “It’s one of those wire buzzer games… I’m not great, but I didn’t expect to get slimed for touching the wire!”
I looked to Chris, who continued to say nothing, then to Rhi and shrugged. “Well, final room and all, I guess things are tougher here.” Craning my neck, I called out to Lena, “Did you hear that?”
“Yeah, I get slimy if I don’t get a puzzle right first time,” she replied, her voice a bit abrupt. “Don’t ruin my concentration, please. I need to focus.”
I was loathe to get slimed, but I had a steady hand and these kinds of buzzer games rarely posed a problem for me, so I took over from Jo and let her move along to another puzzle. I thought back to what Rhiannon had said earlier, about taking it slow and getting it right the first time – there were three others working on different puzzles, and I’d already earned one of the tokens, so I was pulling my weight and a second would be good. With that in mind, I went steadily along the wire, up and down, taking it carefully until I reached the end, letting the ring slide down over the base, which caused a panel to open up, revealing a bright red crescent moon.
I ran back to the monitors to plug it in as Lena arrived with a token of her own. “We’re up to five!” she shouted loudly.
“Halfway!” shouted Izzy, her voice wobbling with nerves. Maybe she wasn’t so keen on getting slimed herself, but she just enjoyed doing it to others – to me – I thought. Surely she shouldn’t be so worked up if she wanted to be dunked? “Come one guys, keep it up!” she shouted, curling her fingers and toes as she wriggled and squirmed on the seat.
I glanced around, looking for something to do as Lena moved over to the hand prints. “Hey Tori!” she shouted, “This needs two people!”
Moving across to the blonde, she waved to a series of hand prints and foot prints on the floor and wall. “We must have to press them all at the same time,” she said, before stepping forwards and placing her feet on two of the foot prints. She leaned forwards to put her hands on two panels on the wall, but before she could make contact, a stream of green slime poured out from a chute above her in the wall, straight into her face as it plastered her hair to her head and then started running over her back, undoubtedly soaking through her swimsuit. She spluttered a bit but reached out for the two hand prints anyway and found them, even as the slime carried on pouring.
“Hurry!” she said to me, “You need to press the others too!”
I looked to the nearest one on the wall and was about to press it when I noticed it had three dots, lined up in the shape of triangle. “No,” I said, “Let go, move off, you’ve got it wrong!”
Lena pulled her hands back and stepped off of the panels, looking to me quizzically. “What?” she asked, before wiping her face. As I looked up at her, I could see that a lot of the slime had coursed down into her cleavage and, continuing its journey, had flowed into her swimsuit too, and she now had a bit of a bulge sloshing around her crotch and stomach. She must have seen me staring, because her face turned into a grin and she leaned in to whisper to me, “It’s cold, and it’s gross, especially down there, but I kind of like it.”
“You’re mad,” I blurted, my cheeks turning red as she tugged open one of the leg holes and expelled the slime from her costume, both of us watching the green goo oozing down her long, toned legs.
“Maybe,” she replied giddily. “Now why did you make me stop?”
I blinked, feeling flustered for a moment, before turning to point at the hand print. “Look, three dots on this one,” I said, before moving to another, “and six dots here. You got slimed for pressing more than one at a time, but I think it’s a sequence.”
“Right, right,” said Lena, before squatting down to look at the floor, an act that squeezed a bit more goop out of her swimsuit, dribbling from between her thighs to the floor below. “I’ll do these ones at the bottom, you do the ones on the wall!” she paused and looked up at me, “And if you want Izzy to get dunked, you’ll just have to waste time here, getting slimy with me.”
I bit my bottom lip, my cheeks flushing red before I turned my back on her. She was only a pitchfork and horns away from being in a devil costume and she was certainly acting like one right now. I scanned the four hand prints, and then pushed in the first one, “One, and, two,” I called out, pressing in a second.
“Three,” replied Lena, “And I can see up your skirt. A thong’s a nice choice, what are you expecting to happen tonight?”
“Four,” I replied, feeling my cheeks burn even brighter and my heart starting to beat faster.
“Five… sex… sorry, six,” she said, grinning.
“Seven,” I said, trying to hold it together as she started brushing her slimy hair against my thigh. “Last one, Lena.”
“And eight,” she said, as a panel slid back at the base of the wall. She leaned forwards and grabbed the yellow item from inside, leaving me stood with my legs apart atop the blonde. She moved back slowly, making sure to brush her slimy hair and shoulders against my bare legs as she did, before rushing back to the monitors just in time to join Joanna.
Joanna looked somewhat taken aback by just how slimy Lena was right now, after all, her long blonde hair was almost entirely green. Lena didn’t seem at all bothered and just slotted in her token as Jo regained her composure and did the same. “We’re up to eight,” she called out as I looked around the room to see Rhi working on something. “We just need the square and the star now.”
“Over near the door,” called Izzy. “There are only two puzzle things left, Rhi’s doing one and the other’s by the door we came in at the beginning. Hurry!” She stomped her feet on the chair’s footrest, digging her fingernails into the arm of the seat as the tension got to her. “There’s not long left!”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t get your knickers in a twist,” I replied, before folding my arms and looking up at her coolly. “We don’t have to rush, you know…”
“Hurry!” she shouted, pouting hard and look every bit like a petulant child. She really didn’t want to get gooped, and I couldn’t help enjoying the sight, knowing that her fate was still in my hands. I could fumble or get something wrong and waste valuable seconds…
So I just moved over to the panel near the doorway instead, reminding myself that I owed it to my other friends more, and so I needed to do my bit. This final puzzle, left until last by chance, consisted of a monitor showing a photograph of the far section of the room and a lever beneath it. As I studied it, I heard the slap and squelch of wet bare feet on metal and turned to see Lena arriving as I spotted Jo moving towards Rhiannon on the other panel.
“Need some help?” she asked. “Not like there are any other puzzles to solve.”
“I’m surprised you aren’t just going back to the solved ones and trying to get covered in slime again,” I replied, smirking.
“Maybe later,” she shrugged, though I noticed she had started wiping her face and trying to scrape the gunk from her hair. “So what’s this?”
“I’ve no idea,” I replied. “It’s just a photo, I don’t really get it.”
“Well, did you try the lever?”
I grinned and stepped back, “Be my guest!”
Lena gave me a look that couldn’t quite kill, but might have maimed a bit, before stepping up and pulling the lever down, which opened up a panel beneath the monitor. “I don’t get it,” she said bluntly.
“It’s like one of those drawers you get at the bank, or in a post office,” I said, “So we must have to put something in there to get our token, but I’m sure we can’t just put anything in there.”
“So what do we do?”
“It must be tied to the picture,” I said, before turning to look at that section of the room. It was the set of monitors, and the slots below, and the resolution was good enough to show each shape clearly. It also featured the two panels on either side, one of which was a puzzle Rhi had solved and the other was the buzzer game I’d taken over from Jo.
“It’s just the other side of the room,” said Lena, who I could tell was getting frustrated with it already. “Do we need to go over there and get something? It’s not pointing to anything!”
“Oh!” I said, joining up the mental dots. “It’s not pointing to anything, because there’s something missing in this picture. Or maybe more than one thing. It’s like spot the difference and what’s not in the picture is what needs to go in the drawer. I hope.”
“Me too,” said Lena. “I’ll go over here, you shout me what’s missing.”
As she turned, we heard a squeal and saw both Rhi and Jo engulfed in a deluge of green slime from a pipe above. Rhi was bearing the brunt of it, stood at the front of the panel, especially once Jo stepped back out of it and started wiping her hair. “Yuck,” she muttered, scraping it from her face as the deluge stopped and Rhi went back to work.
“That’s the last time I listen to you!” she exclaimed before solving whatever puzzle it was. “I’ve got the square,” she shouted, “That just leaves it to you, Tori!”
Lena looked back over her shoulder at me, “I won’t tell them if you really want to slime Izzy. I promise.” She then moved off before I could respond and walked towards that section of the wall, joining up with the other two as Rhi slotted in her token.
“So what are we looking for?” shouted Jo.
“I’m still working it out,” I replied, and I was. It was hard, because I’d have to try to memorise the picture, or at least part of it, and then turn to look at the room, and then look back to the picture to confirm if it was the same. My head was on a swivel. The left-hand side of the photo looked right, the panel was exactly the same as it looked from here, there was nothing out of place that I could identify, from the overhead gunge chute to the floor, to the panel, it all looked the same.
“Here,” said Rhi, still covered in gunge, “I’ll help. You look at the left side, I’ll do the right, there’s got to be something.”
Having already checked the left, I was really looking at the centre now, in the area around the monitors, but I wasn’t going to just argue with Rhi now. She still looked a bit pissed at having been slimed already, whether or not it was Jo’s fault was what I really wondered, though.
As I looked back over, I saw something red on the front of one of the monitor screens. They were all black and white, and a quick glance back showed nothing red in the picture. “Hey, Lena,” I called out, “Is there something red on one of the monitors? The one top centre?”
Lena turned around and looked at it, “No,” she replied shaking her head.
“Yes there is!” shouted Izzy. “It’s been bugging me all evening, but it’s not on the monitors, it’s on a rope dangling down. I don’t know what it is, it’s like a red Christmas bauble, I don’t care, but just grab it Lena!”
Lena pushed her tongue against the roof her mouth and sighed, “If I end up covered in slime again, you will all be sorry!”
“Hey!” shouted Izzy, “I’m about to get mutated here!”
“If I get slimed again, you are definitely getting mutated,” replied the German, flashing a grin that looked even whiter than usual with all the slime on her face as she grabbed the red handle and pulled the rope.
Sure enough, a stream of green gunge poured down over Lena from above. She muttered something in German, and I could easily guess what it meant, as the slime washed over her hair, face and shoulders once more. Giving up completely, she just held her arms out to the side and stood there, letting it wash over her, even as it started to fill up her swimsuit again. “You’re getting this too, Izzy!” she shouted, looking directly up at the nervous brunette.
“Not when we’re this close,” said Jo as she snatched the bauble out of Lena’s outstretched arm and rushed across the floor towards Rhi and myself. She threw the bauble, which I found, thankfully, wasn’t made of glass when I caught it and then placed it into the deposit. Rhi cranked the handle and, sure enough, we were rewarded with the final token, a yellow plastic star.
Without a moment’s hesitation, I grabbed it and chucked it to Jo, who ran across the room to the monitors and fitted it into place. There was a shrill beeping noise before all of the monitors turned off, the lights brightened and a drawer opened, revealing the key we needed to release Izzy. This was compounded by the tannoy, which cried out the phrase “SUCCESS!” to our delight.
We all celebrated our victory and moved towards the metre-tall dunk tank where Izzy was still sat. Lena was leaning over it, peering down at the bubbling mass of green goo and flicking bits of it at Izzy’s bare feet and lower legs.
“Quit it,” she hissed, curling her toes as if trying to get away. “Untie me already!”
“Only if they want to,” said Abby, who had been stood silently beside Izzy for the game. “I mean, maybe they think you should get dunked.”
Izzy’s eyes widened and she looked down at the four of us, who had gathered around the tank, along with Chris. He shrugged, “It’s up to the group.”
Rhi and Jo immediately looked to me, as Lena did the same, dripping gunge from her hands back into the pool. “She’s your girlfriend,” said Jo, shrugging her shoulders.
“I won’t be if she dunks me!” shouted Izzy, still struggling against the restraints. “Come on Tori, get me down! I don’t deserve this!”
So here I was. We’d won the game and I could still dunk Izzy in front of everyone and, somehow, as I looked up at her pouting face… I sighed. “She’s right, she doesn’t deserve it, let’s get her down,” I said, before nodding at Jo to pass the key up to Abby.
Izzy grinned and kicked her legs happily as Abby reached over and unfastened her wrists first, then her waist. “I’d have dunked her,” she said, as she helped Izzy down from the seat. “Seems like a waste of perfectly good slime, especially at the end of the night.”
Chris nodded, “I agree. It would be shame not to dunk someone. We can’t keep the slime overnight, so we’ll be chucking it either way.”
“Tori!” shouted Lena, as my jaw pretty much hit the floor. “She’s given in to romance and decided not to dunk Izzy. What is this, Valentine’s? No, it’s Halloween, and she should get her own little fright!”
“She did slow us down a bit too,” added Rhi, who was completely neglecting to mention how she’d kept the mention of slime completely hidden from us until we were already here. “She probably made the most mistakes.”
“Dowdy receptionist zombie’s right,” said Chris, clearing his throat. “Airline hostess here did cost you some time, though it’s part of the team’s duty to help out those that are struggling. She did well with some of these final puzzles, to be fair to her.”
“Yeah, but she’s the also least mucky of us,” said Jo, with her hands on her hips. “Well, except Izzy, of course.”
“Hey, don’t put this back on me, I’ve only just got down,” pouted Izzy.
Rhiannon huffed, “I wouldn’t have been slimed if it wasn’t for you anyway, Jo!”
“Well excuse me for trying to help – you’re just grumpy because no-one knows what your costume is supposed to be!” snapped Jo, before sticking her tongue out.
“Oh, you want to go there?” replied Rhi, “Are you a zombie builder or just a zombie les-”
She was cut short by a scream and turned… to look at me. “Eep!” I exclaimed involuntarily as Lena grabbed me from behind, hooking her arms under mine, lifting me off of the ground.
“Enough talking,” she said, “Grab a leg each!”
I cringed and shook my head, curling my toes and fingers as I knew what was coming. Jo and Rhiannon each grabbed a leg, while Izzy looked on, grinning wickedly. She was doing something I found incredibly cute, but also slightly unnerving – whenever she bit her tongue between her teeth, so that the tip just poked out of her mouth, as she was doing now – it meant she was excited, and happy, but above all, she was having naughty thoughts, and I knew just what was on her mind. She glanced to the vat of goo and then back to me, coyly waving her fingers at me with one hand as I shut my eyes.
The girls carried me into place and, under Lena’s countdown, swung me back, then forwards, then back, forwards, back and then forwards again, launching me through the air and into the vat. I felt myself land with a wet, heavy squelch in the middle of the pool, the gunge quickly sucking me in as it ran over my bare legs and feet, and then inside of my skirt, before the rest of me was sucked in too, and the bright lights above me went dark as the gunge enveloped my head and I felt myself sink completely into the mire. It was warm, as Abby had promised, and I could feel it bubbling inside the pool, pressing against my bare legs and hands as I continued to sink for another moment, still lying almost horizontally under the surface of the pool.
It hadn’t taken long at all to soak through my costume and, more than that, my underwear. Lena hadn’t been wrong about my wearing a thong, and for all that the German had been a bit forward, the gunge was far, far more pervasive, invading every part of my costume and body without a second thought for my privacy. It was in my thong, in my bra, my ears, my nostrils, my hair… for as much as I thought I’d been messed up once before by Izzy, this was a whole new level of messy, and I genuinely was gunged from head to toe, with not a single inch of my body spared from the slop. Turning slowly, against the thick, heavy gunge, I managed to find my footing on the base of the tank and, with something to push off against, I stood up again, pushing my head back up to rend the surface, gasping for air as the darkness lifted somewhat and I could make out muffled sounds around me.
My first instinct was to wipe my mouth and, as gross as it might sound, to force the goop from my nose too, so that I could breathe again, which I did with a loud gasp, before moving to wipe my eyes and ears afterwards. I had to blink a few times, but I could hear the laughter easily enough and turned around to see my friends staring back as I stood in the gunge up to my chest. In fact, my breasts appeared to be floating on the surface, such was the height of goop, and Izzy was staring right at them, her cheeks very red as she watched with delight all across her face.
“It’s a good job we did save Izzy,” said Jo, “I’m not sure she’d be able to stand up in there!”
“I’m not that small,” she scoffed, pushing Jo playfully. “No, no, this was the right choice, Lena did very well.”
Lena was propping herself up on her elbows by the side of the vat, idly flicking gunge towards me with a grin. I locked eyes with her and she just winked back, clearly very pleased with herself.
“You look so ridiculous,” said Rhiannon, grinning. “I am so glad that isn’t me!” Her eyes widened a little, “You’re wearing a skirt!”
“She’s been wearing one all night,” replied Jo. “What’s your point?”
“Well, the slime’s going to be all, you know…” Rhi wrinkled her nose in disgust.
Jo blinked, and looked to me in confusion, and I just sighed, “She means that that I’m going to have gunge in my knickers… and she’s right.”
Jo burst out laughing as Lena and Izzy smirked at me. Rhi just shook her head, looking slightly apologetic, but there was definitely some relief on her face that it wasn’t her. All I could do was just stand there, with gunge all over me as the vat of radioactive green goop continued to bubble and slosh around me. At least my costume had been bought cheap, I thought, I’d never get the deposit back if I’d hired one.
“Well girls,” said Abby, who had been quietly conferring with Chris. “You’ve made it out in 57:49, so congratulations!”
“How does that compare?” asked Rhiannon, who was still trying to wipe some of the gunge from her hair.
Chris and Abby exchanged a look before he cleared his throat. “Right, if you lot want to come with me, we’ve got warm showers and some spare clothing in the back for all of you.” He looked my way, “Gungey, you can just wait there and we’ll come back with some stuff to help you out.”
“Gungey?” I replied, shaking my head. “That is so unfair.”
Lena grinned, “I’ll wait with gungey.” Her accent made the word sound stranger than usual, and she must have been amused by it too, given the daft smile on her face.
The others left with Chris and Abby, so that Lena and I were alone.
“So, not what you wanted, huh?” she asked, grinning smugly. “You should have let Izzy take the fall!”
“I should have done,” I said, looking back to her and shaking my head. “You know you’re the worst for dumping me in here, right?”
“Worst?” she asked with a grin, “Or best?” She pulled her hand out of the gunge and licked it from her forefinger, smirking as she did, “You’re telling me you don’t like how it feels against your body… inside your thong?”
“Lena!” I replied, blushing deeply, not that anyone could tell under the bright green goop on my cheeks. “You’re the worst. Definitely.”
The blonde shrugged her shoulders and stuck her tongue out at me. “Whatever you say, gungey!”