“Ashlyn, is that you?” Keylie yelled out.
“Keylie, thank God! How did we get here? Is there a light?” Ashlyn yelled, upset to find out that she wasn't the only one in the room. There was more than one person in this coffin.
“I don’t know, Ash. We’ll figure it out, just feel the walls, we need to find a light,” Keylie said, standing on her feet, to find her legs quite weak, but she wasn’t about to give up.
Keylie wasn’t a really big girl, at 5’ she was 110 pounds soaking wet with straight dark brown hair to just below her chest. She had beautiful facial features, a cute little button nose and big sky blue eyes, needless to say, she could get any guy she so desired. Ashlyn, on the other hand, was hour glass figured, about 5’6, but didn’t have a whole lot of style and never made her body work, at all. She had shoulder length blond hair, which was the most noticeable and obvious thing about her. Her face was cute, she didn’t stick out in a crowd, but if she was with the right people, she’d get noticed.
Suddenly the bright lights came on, Keylie and Ashlyn both quickly covered their eyes. The room was grungy and dirty looking, it actually looked a lot like a bathroom, kind of like the one you see when you’re on a road trip and you stop at that one gas station in the middle of nowhere because you really have to pee.
“Why the hell are we in a bathroom?” Ashlyn asked with a puzzled look on her face.
“Who knows. Um, I don’t see how necessary it is to have chains on our ankles. Ugh, this is a total disaster. We need to figure out a way out of here, fast,” Keylie said putting her head in her hands.
“Well I’m sure we could figure it out if we knew why we were even here!” Ashlyn yelled, frustrated.
“Ash, calm down. We need to figure something out. Dig in all your pockets, see if you can find anything.”
Pulling their pockets inside out, they both found tapes. Both saying their names, it was unmistakable.
“Ashlyn, how do we play these?” Keylie asked, looking around for some sort of clue.
“If I knew do you think I’d still be looking? Wait, is that blood?!” Jacey said, backing up to the wall.
“Whoa, that’s messed. Look, do you see that?” Keylie asked, looking disgusted yet interested.
“No, what?” Ashlyn said, moving closer.
“Look Ashlyn," Keylie said looking closer, “he’s got a tape player.”
“Keylie, take off your jacket and see if you can reach it.”
“Okay, I’ll try.”
Keylie remarkably got the tape.
“I’m playing mine first,” Keylie said, giving Ashlyn the biggest glare ever.
Ashlyn just snarled and kept her mouth shut.
“Hello Keylie, I want to play a game. There’s someone in the bath tub next to you, her name is Shelbi. You’ve been friends for years, even knowing the horrible things she does. You’ve got involved with her throughout the years and it’s time to pay for your sins. You’ve been a junkie for five months now, I think it’s time you kick the habit that’s been controlling your life. But shh, don’t tell Shelbi, the key you need to win the game is in her stomach. She’s your strategy, keep her until the clock ticks down and then you need to crush her. The key you need to start your game lies beneath the heart. Let the game begin.”
Keylie started walking over to Shelbi when Ashlyn interrupted, “Hey! Don’t wake her up yet, you heard the tape. I need to hear mine, we can’t let her know about this. You heard him, it’s her or us. It’s a game.”
Keylie started softly sobbing as she threw the tape player over to Ashlyn.
“Hello Ashlyn, I want to play a game. For years you’ve been deceiving and lying to people who trust you the most, now it’s time for you to take the ultimate test. The two girls in the room with you don’t know your secret, nor do they have to find out. Use this to your advantage, the smartest comes out on top. If you don’t figure out the meaning of life, you won’t come out of this alive. Cherish your life, Ashlyn. Let the game begin.”
Keylie took her face out from behind her hands, “You’ve got a secret?”
“It’s not important,” Ashlyn replied, feeling up the wall.
“What’re you doing?” Keylie asked, with a puzzled look on her face.
“Looking for a key to get out of this room,” Ashlyn replied, still focused on the walls.
“He said the key to get out of here lies beneath the heart, look,” Keylie said, pointing towards the floor.
On the floor was a heart painted in black, it wasn’t quite dry, it looked like fresh paint.
“I’ll get the key, wake Shelbi up,” Ashlyn said, moving fast.
Keylie walked over to Shelbi and shook her gently, “Wake up, Shelbi, wake up, please wake up.”
“What? Whoa!” Shelbi started thrashing in the shallow water that was her prison.
“It’s okay, it’s just me, Keylie,” she said, trying to comfort her.
“Here,” Ashlyn said handing the key to Keylie, “you’re going to need this if you want your chains undone.”
Ashlyn had already freed herself and was searching for a way out.
“Wait, don’t get rid of that key, we’re going to need it,” Ashlyn said, rattling a blue, wooden door with a latch on it.
Once Keylie got Shelbi out of the tub and herself unhooked, she passed the key on to Ashlyn so she could unlatch the door.
“It’s a different lock,” Jacey said, frustrated, “wait, wait, turn off the lights!”
Shelbi pulled down the light switch and big bold letters written in glow-in-the-dark paint lighted up on the wall. They read “CHERISH YOUR LIFE.”
Ashlyn quickly turned the lights back on and started trying to grasp the bricks in the wall to find a key.
“I got it!” Ashlyn said, pulling a brick out and grabbing the key.
“Let’s get out of here and do this thing before something bad happens,” Shelbi said, putting her fists in the sleeves of her Reebok sweater and holding them tightly.
Ashlyn swiftly unlatched the door and put the lock in her pocket. It took a little bit of a push to open the door, and when they walked in they realized why.
Their push set off a ten minute timer and a TV in the corner of the dark, four walled room. All they could see was nails in glass jars which looked to be connected to the timer, in other words, they were nail bombs.
“Look,” Keylie said, pointing at the TV which quickly cleared from static to the scariest face they’d ever seen. It looked to be a puppet with a black suit and red bow tie on, but it’s hair was matted and there were little bright red swirls on its cheeks.
“Hello Keylie, Ashlyn and Shelbi. I want to play a game. This room can either be your deathbed or it can be your savior, but you won’t learn that until you play this game. There is a man at the corner of your room with an X on his stomach, you need to take the scalpel on the floor next to him and dig until you find a key. If you find the key you have to find the door to use it on. But hurry, once the timer goes off, so will all those bombs and you’ll never get out. Let the game begin.”
They all looked at each other, searching for help.
“Okay, wait, we need to figure this out,” Shelbi said, looking scared as always.
“No, we need to do this,” Ashlyn said, running over to the guy on the floor, picking up the scalpel.
“Ash don’t!” Keylie yelled, covering her eyes.
Ashlyn impaled him with the scalpel and starting cutting a large hole in his stomach. She looked back at the timer, five minutes left.
Keylie and Shelbi were standing in another corner, bawling, but Ashlyn soon found the key and wiped it off on her pants. She pocketed the scalpel without the other two seeing.
“Hurry up and find a damn door,” Ashlyn said, feeling the walls up and down.
“Wait,” Keylie said, lifting up the rug that laid daintily on the floor, “here’s a door, hurry Ashlyn!”
Ashlyn unlocked the door with forty seconds to spare and they hurried down the stairs and latched the door quickly again.
“Ow, I got a sliver!” Shelbi yelled, quickly putting her thumb in her mouth.
“Suck it up, Shelbi, we could’ve been dead in there, get over yourself,” Ashlyn said, getting mad.
Shelbi just rolled her eyes in reply.
“What’re we going to do?” Keylie asked, looking down the winding hallways.
“We’re going to go down this hallway and play our next game, unless you’d rather die,” Ashlyn said, eyeing up and down the hallways.
“This one,” Shelbi said pointing to their left, “it’s different than the other two hallways, it’s got a light.”
They all started down the hallway until they came to a steel door with “ONE STEP CLOSER” written on it in red spray paint.
“I guess we’re one step closer,” Ashlyn said, opening the door.
This room was carpeted from top to bottom with three saw blades connected to a timer that wasn’t yet set off.
“Nobody...” Ashlyn’s words were interrupted by Keylie’s quick pacing, “move. Oh God.”
The five minute timer started before anyone could even say anything. The TV in the corner of the room came on once again.
“Hello and welcome, you’re now one step closer to freedom. In this part of your game, you all need to let something out. In your case, it’s going to be blood. Once you start those saw blades, you’re all going to need to give two pints of blood with any body part you choose. Once the beaker is filled, the door will unlock and you can proceed to exit the room. How much blood will you shed to stay alive? Let the game begin.”
“Hurry!” Ashlyn said, taking her hair bands off her arm and giving one to each of the girls to cut off as much circulation as they could.
“Just use your arms!” Shelbi said, hurrying to pull up her sleeve.
As the clock ticked down, they were hurrying to get up the courage to put their arms on the saw blades.
“3...” Ashlyn started, “2... 1!”
As soon as Ashlyn said one, all three put their arms in the saw blades.
“Oh my God... oh my God!” Keylie screamed in agony.
“Just keep your arm in there, stay there, don’t give up!” Ashlyn yelled.
They finally heard the locks open on the door as Shelbi and Keylie fell to the ground, Jacey was on her knees, sobbing.
“Come on guys, we have to go,” Ashlyn said, trying to get to her feet.
Ashlyn helped Shelbi and Keylie to their feet, dragging herself and them to the next game. They went down a dark corridor which went to what seemed to be a dead end. A solid wall.
Shelbi and Keylie were still extremely weak and Ashlyn was carrying each on an arm, little did they know that Ashlyn knew exactly what to do.
She grabbed the end of the wall and pulled it sideways, revealing a dirty bathroom, quite like the one that they started in. In fact, it was the one that they started in, except no doors, no tape player, no nothing. Just toilets and things out of the toilets, all over the walls.
“What are you doing?” Keylie asked weakly. The walls were spinning and she could hardly recognize anything.
Ashlyn brought them both into the room and set them down. She hooked Keylie up to a chain that was secured with a lock, and didn’t give her the key. Then she took Shelbi to the other side and put a chain around her ankle. Then she took the scalpel and keys she gathered from the start and set them in one of the toilets.
Keylie and Shelbi were too disoriented to realize anything except that they’d been chained up. The room was dark, so they couldn’t see when Ashlyn put everything they needed in the toilet.
Shelbi and Keylie were both weakly crying out for help, thinking Ashlyn was still going to rescue them. Ashlyn quickly pulled two saws out of the back of the toilet and threw them in the middle of the room. As she got the saws, she also got a tape, she put it in the recorder and pressed play.
“Hello Ashlyn, if you’re listening to this tape, you’ve won your game. You played this game the way I told you to, and you’ve been rehabilitated for the second time. I bet Keylie and Shelbi weren’t aware that you played before and you knew exactly what to do and where to find everything. You’ve finally learned how to cherish your life, Ashlyn. Now, start their game before it’s too late. Make sure you don’t forget anything.”
As it ended, Ashlyn took her tape and put the recorder in the safe hidden in the wall. Then she took one last look in the room and tried to imagine what was to come from the next game.
With that, she shut the door and said, “Game over.”
