(set: $lastroom to 1)
This room of the house is completely empty. The walls are white; the floors are white; the ceiling is white. Every surface is as pristine as if it had never been touched. Which could be true, for all you know. There is no door behind you, which begs the question of how you got in here in the first place.
In front of you, there is [[a door made entirely of what looks like ice->room5 (ice room)]]. Puffs of thick white fog billow at its base like a bad stage show effect. It is streaked through with enough white that you can't see what lies on the other side.
To your right, there is [[a door frame hidden only by a curtain of brown beads->room2 (forest)]], rustling gently in a wind you definitely can't feel. You swear you can hear what you would nebulously define as "outdoors sounds" coming from that direction.
You have the feeling it's going to get weirder from here.(if: $lastroom is 1)[As you approach the door, you feel the temperature in the room drop by a number of degrees. A large number. This feels wrong based on what you know about thermodynamics, considering how small the room is, but you have the feeling that wherever you are doesn't care too much about things like the laws of physics. You push on the door--there's nothing to pull--and the surface is so cold it hurts your hands. It's also super heavy. You manage to squeeze your way through, and the door shuts behind you with an icy sort of "thunk."
It's freezing in here. which is roughly what you might have expected, given how you got in. You're wearing...a t-shirt and jeans? That's good to know. Not especially weather-appropriate, but you can be forgiven under the circumstances.]
(if: $lastroom is 6)[Kicking your legs and sort of wiggling yourself to the left, you propel yourself towards the ice door. As you get closer to it, the pleasantly lukewarm temperature rapidly takes on the temperature of...something unpleasantly cold.
You swim faster.
As soon as you get close to the doorway, something pushes at your back like a particularly strong wave, and you go tumbling forward into air and onto ground. It is FREEZING in here, and you're still soaking wet from the whole being underwater thing. Shivering, you push yourself to your feet to examine your surroundings.]
The whole room looks like it was built by one of the people who makes ice sculptures for fancy dinner parties. The floor is still white (you think), but covered in about two inches of snow, which your sneakers are currently making foot-shaped dents in. Pillars of ice line the walls, connecting floor to ceiling (wait if there's a ceiling where did the snow come from) and carved into twisty spiral patterns. Icicles hang overhead in a way that makes you distinctly nervous. The center of the room is crowded with intricate ice sculptures of various animals, much wider and taller than you are, an spaced in a REALLY ANNOYING WAY such that you basically have to squeeze yourself around them.
In front of you is a (statue of) [a grizzly bear]<bear| reared up on its hind legs, its head nearly brushing the icicles dripping from the ceiling. At least it's probably a grizzly bear. You're not a bear expert.
(click: ?bear)[-
You squeeze your way around the grizzly(?) bear.
In front of you is [a swan]<swan|. Pretty standard ice sculpture fair except for how fuck-off huge it is. Its wings are fanned out, little icicles hanging from the splayed feathers. Its beak is open in a majestic honk.]
(click: ?swan)[-
You squeeze your way around the swan. You were hoping there would be a door here, but this room is apparently longer than the one you started in.
Instead of a door, in front of you is a uh...[half horse half turtle...thing]<hortle|? Like a horse with a turtle shell and also it has turtle feet instead of hooves?
You don't like it.
You decide to just squeeze around the horse-turtle (turse? hortle?) instead of spending any more time looking at it.]
(click: ?hortle)[-
You squeeze around the hortle. Frankly you don't even like the way your shoulder touches it as you shimmy through.
In front of you is a snowman. It has an impossibly large carrot for a nose, and it looks like it's wearing a bedsheet for a scarf. A line of coal buttons runs from neck to base, each one a chunk about the size of your fist.
-
[[Steal a button?]<steal|
[Squeeze past the snowman?]<squeeze|]<options|
(click: ?steal)[(replace: ?options)[(set: $coal to 1)[Well, "steal" is probably a strong word. You figure the snowman probably isn't going to miss it.
You pry the closest coal button from the snowman's flesh. It comes out with very little resistance. As soon as it pops free, the snowman quivers like jelly and then dissolves, all at once, into a rush of cold water that splashes to the floor around you and immediately soaks your shoes. (if: $wet is 1)[At least they were already wet. ]You stuff the coal into the empty backpack you're apparently wearing.
Behind the former location of the snowman is [[a door->room9 (the closet)]], a simple one made of oak (maybe, you're not a wood expert) with a faded-looking golden knob.(if: $wet is not 1)[(set: $wetshoes to 1)]]]]]
(click:?squeeze)[(replace: ?options)[Mama didn't raise a criminal.
You maneuver your way around the snowman; unsettlingly, you'd swear you feel it inch just slightly out of your way as your butt brushes against its cold body.
Let's not dwell on that.
Behind the former location of the snowman is [[a door->room9 (the closet)]], a simple one made of oak (maybe, you're not a wood expert) with a faded-looking golden knob.]]]
(set: $lastroom to 5)
You brush the bead curtain aside with both hands. It makes the sound that bead curtains make. You step through.
The transition from "unsettlingly white" to "unsettlingly green" is seamless. Or really, it's not so much the color of this room that's unsettling you as the fact that it isn't a room at all and you are currently standing in the middle of the goddamn woods.
You turn back around. The bead curtain is behind you, dangling from a low-hanging branch and swaying in a breeze that you can definitely feel, and when you reach out a hand to part it there's nothing behind it but even more woods.
So that's cool.
Before you lies verdant forest. To your left lies more verdant forest, plus you can hear the trickling of a creek in the distance. To your right is a messy-looking tangle of extremely out-of-place-looking vines that looks as though it was designed specifically to block your path.
Something tells you you can't go back.
[[Go forth?]<forward|
[Go leftth?]<left|]<directions|
(click: ?forward)[(replace: ?directions)[-
You sally forth, stepping carefully over roots as you pick your way through the trees. The ground is covered in a spongy layer of moss and mulch. It would probably be pleasant to walk barefoot here, but there's an approximate zero percent chance of you taking off your shoes.
You've never been much of an outdoors person, and it's questionable whether this counts as outdoors. If you look up, you can't quite see the sky--the trees are forming a thick, leafy canopy that blocks your view. Despite the apparent lack of light source, you can see as if it was perfect daylight. Obviously. It's how you managed to get this far.
As you press on, [a clearing]<clearing| makes itself visible through the trees.]
(click: ?clearing)[-
There are no trees in the clearing. This is the definition of a clearing. A fairy ring of cartoonishly bright red-capped toadstools creates a neat circle around the edges. If you look up, you can in fact see a ceiling. It appears to be made of the same wood as the trees that surround you. So the room is finite in one way or another. That feels like important information.
More important information: There's a door in the center of the clearing.
You're not sure whether it just appeared in front of your eyes or you managed to block it out until just now because of how weird it is. The door is a slab of gray marble with a curved handle carved of the same stone, standing unsupported in the center of the mushroom ring.
[[Walk around to the other side?]<walk|
[[Just open the door?->room3 (art room)]]
(click-replace: ?walk)[You walk around to the other side of the door. It's exactly the same. You're not sure what you expected.
]]]]
(click: ?left)[(replace: ?directions)[-
You sally left, heading in the direction of running water and whatever else lies through the trees.
The woods seem like every other woods you've ever happened to spend a short amount of time in. You can hear the chirping of birds and chirruping of insects even though you can't see any of either, all against the backdrop of the quiet rustling of leaves.
You hope the rest of this place is as nice as this room.
The creek isn't too far away. It's a thin finger of water, maybe three feet across, rumbling shallowly across a bed of roots and stones.
Inside the creek is a door.
[Wait, what?]<huh|
(click-replace: ?huh)[-
The creek is shallow enough that you could stand in it without getting wet past your ankles--you can tell this just looking at it--but also, somehow, when you focus on the water, you can see a doorway deep within, a wooden frame surrounding a dark emptiness.
The duality is threatening to give you a headache. You can feel it tingling behind your eyes.
You're not quite sure what would happen if you stepped into the creek, but you have the feeling it'd be something weird.
[Turn back?]<reverse|
[[Step into the creek?->room6 (underwater room)]]]]]
(click-replace: ?reverse)[When you turn around, you find the path between the trees blocked off by the same suspicious tangle of vines you saw earlier. You have the unsettling feeling someone is doing this to you on purpose.
]
(set: $lastroom to 2)
You open the door and step through. A simple affair.
The room you just came from wasn't wide enough for the sculptures that filled it, but this one is downright narrow. It's less a room than a hallway, really, except it's less a hallway than a closet because it's full of clothes. There are pairs of what look like shoes scattered around your feet, and your line of sight ahead is blocked by what look like shirts and pants hanging from pipes that line the walls on either side.
It's not super bright in here. It's kinda hard to see.
[(if: $wet is 1)[Change into some dry clothes?]<dry|
(if: $wetshoes is 1)[Change into some dry shoes?]<shoes|
[Go forward?]<forward|]<go|
(click-replace: ?dry)[(set: $wet to 0)[Fumbling around in the dim light, you manage to maneuver yourself into a dry outfit, leaving your wet clothes in a sodden heap on the floor.
]]
(click-replace: ?shoes)[(set: $wetshoes to 0)[Fumbling around in the dim light, you manage to maneuver yourself into a pair of dry sneakers, leaving your wet ones in sadly dripping water on the floor.
]]
(click: ?forward)[(replace: ?go)[[-
You push your way through the shirts and coats, narrowly avoiding stumbling over the shoes crowding the floor an embarrassing number of times. After pushing your way through way too many hangers of clothes (seriously how big is this place), the closet gives way to mostly-empty hallway.
The hallway terminates in a wall decorated with a highly photorealistic portait of a distinctly irritated-looking person. Further inspection reveals that this is a mirror.
On the left, there are wall-mounted shelves lined with neat rows of various and sundry hats. On the right, there is a stately-looking set of carved wooden double doors with curved silver handles.
[Take a hat?]<hat|
[[Open the door?->room10 (the library)]]
(click-replace: ?hat)[You take a (either: "fedora", "fez", "top hat", "bowler hat", "baseball cap", "sun hat", "flat cap") from the shelf and place it on your head at a rakish angle. You turn to look approvingly at yourself in the mirror.
The mirror has been replaced with a blank expanse of wall.(set: $hat to 1)
]]]]
(set: $lastroom to 9)(if: $lastroom is 6)[You paddle your way over to the wooden doors. You're contemplating how hard it's gonna be to try and pull something while floating in water, the doors make a faint creaking sound and then swing open in front of you, revealing a shadowed room in front of you.
A current hits you gently from behind, sending you tumbling forward out of the water. You hit the carpeted floor and roll.]
(if: $lastroom is 9)[You grab both of the handles and pull the door open. The wood creaks and groans but swings without too much effort required on your part. The doors are so big and the hallway is so narrow that they just bump into the far wall and stay half-open, but that's all you need to enter.]
{(if: $hat is 1)[You adjust your hat and step forward.](else:)[You step forward.]}
-
You're not sure what room you're in because it's fucking dark in here.
There's a dying fire crackling weakly in a fireplace against the rightmost wall. You can vaguely make out a spiral pattern on the carpet in front of the fireplace, but the rest of the room might as well not even be there.
You reflect that you can't take it on faith that anything is there at all. Not in this house.
[Stumble forward?]<forward|(click-replace: ?forward)[You don't need to stumble. You know how to walk. You just do it real slow and careful-like. (if: $wet is 1 or $wetshoes is 1)[Your wet shoes make squelching noises as you go.]
You can just barely feel the warmth emanating from the fire as you approach it. If only you had something to stoke it with.
[(if: $coal is 1)[Throw your ill-gotten coal in the fire?]<coal|
[Keep going?]<go|]<choices|]
(click: ?coal)[(replace: ?choices)[-
Yeah remember that coal you took from the snowman? You fish it out of your backpack and toss it into the fireplace. It begins to sizzle(if: wet is 1)[ despite the fact that it was definitely damp]. The flames curl around it, eager for fuel, and as the snowman's button is consumed the flames grow larger and brighter, filling the fireplace and spilling light into the room.
You're in a library. The wall opposite the fireplace is lined with tall bookshelves, stuffed so full of book they're threatening to come spilling out onto the floor. None of them have titles, for some reason.
The wall with the fireplace has eyes.
There is a pair of them, half-lidded and deep brown and each one the size of your head, staring intently at you from over the mantle. The other ones are, y'know, eye-sized, dotting the wall at random intervals, some closed and some open and a few leaking tears that trickle down the wall.
You have never hated anything more in your life.
[[Get the fuck out of here?->room14 (desert room)]]]]
(click: ?go)[(replace: ?choices)[-
Unfortunately, you don't have anything like that on you. You're just going to have to feel your way to this room's exit.
[[Feel along the left wall?]<left|
[Feel along the right wall?]<right|]<walls|]]
(click: ?left)[(replace: ?walls)[You feel your way along the left wall. It's lined with ridges that feel like--yeah, they're bookshelves. You're in some sort of library. You traverse the rest of the length of the room with your left hand trailing along the spines of the books.
You discover the end of the room by bumping into the wall. There's a door here. You feel it with both hands--it's [[a thin, wooden door->room14 (desert room)]], only anchored in place on one side, like the kind that would let you into an old-timey saloon.]]
(click: ?right)[(replace: ?walls)[You move closer to the fireplace, groping for purchase on the right wall. Your palm squishes against something the texture of firm jelly, and you feel a wet fluttering against your hand like an eyelid closing.
You shriek in revulsion and stumble back over to the left wall.
You feel your way along the left wall. It's lined with ridges that feel like--yeah, they're bookshelves. That's a relief. You're in some sort of library. You traverse the rest of the length of the room with your left hand trailing along the spines of the books.
You discover the end of the room by bumping into the wall. There's a door here. You feel it with both hands--it's [[a thin, wooden door->room14 (desert room)]], only anchored in place on one side, like the kind that would let you into an old-timey saloon.]]
(set: $lastroom to 10)(if: $lastroom is 2)[You pull on the marble handle and the door swimgs out toward you. Behind it, in the shape of the slab, you can see your way into an immaculately clean and completely empty art gallery. Nothing separates this vision from the view of the forest that surrounds it, and the sight of one reality superimposed on top of another makes you feel a little bit ill.
Would you have seen the same thing if you had entered from the other direction? Probably. Your head hurts too much already to think about that too hard.
You step forward.
-]
This room is enclosed by marble floors and a marble ceiling and marble walls. (if: $lastroom is 2)[The slab of a door swings shut behind you with nothing more than a "whiff" of air, leaving nothing but seamless wall decorated with a handle in its place.] There are picture frames artfully arranged all around you, the fancy gilded kind they have in art museums and galleries, and almost all of them are empty.
There is one painting you can currently see, a massive one that takes up the far wall: (either: "a massive ship being tossed to and fro on a storm-clouded sea","a tall, blank-faced woman wrapped in a sari of shimmering fabric","a man lying motionless on a rain-slicked city street","a coiled, two-headed snake","a naked man balancing on a tightrope, illuminated by a warm yellow spotlight"). When you move towards it, you see that there are paths branching off to your left and right.
[[[Go right?]<right1|
[Go left?]<left1|]]<directions1||turn1)[-
You turn $direction.
The walls are still covered in artful arrangements of blank picture frames. On the far wall is a painting of (either: "a doleful-looking whale","a bloody woman doing a handstand","an ashen-faced boy curled up into a ball","a lightbulb lying smashed on a linoleum floor","a hand with loosely curled fingers").
[[Go right?]<right2|
[Go left?]<left2|]<directions2|](click: ?right1)[(set: $direction to "right")[(replace: ?directions1)[(show: ?turn1)]]](click: ?left1)[(set: $direction to "left")[(replace: ?directions1)[(show: ?turn1)]]]|turn2)[-
You turn $direction.
On the far wall is a painting of (either: "a magician pulling a stuffed rabbit out of a hat","a skeletal-looking horse grazing on brown grass","a wolf baying at an empty sky","a boxer with a bleeding lip and buckling knees","two children playing a clapping game against a void of white").
[[Go right?]<right3|
[Go left?]<left3|]<directions3|](click: ?right2)[(set: $direction to "right")[(replace: ?directions2)[(show: ?turn2)]]](click: ?left2)[(set: $direction to "left")[(replace: ?directions2)[(show: ?turn2)]]]|turn3)[-
You turn $direction.
On the far wall is a painting of (either: "a man buried up to his head on the sand on a rocky beach","a boy flying a ragged kite","a gravestone with its lettering weathered off","a laundry line with its wares fluttering in the breeze","a weeping woman resting her cheek against a windowsill").
[[Go right?]<right4|
[Go left?]<left4|]<directions4|](click: ?right3)[(set: $direction to "right")[(replace: ?directions3)[(show: ?turn3)]]](click: ?left3)[(set: $direction to "left")[(replace: ?directions3)[(show: ?turn3)]]]|turn4)[-
You turn $direction.
On the far wall is a painting of (either: "a nun with her hands folded on her lap","a cardinal in flight","a girl in a nightgown descending a staircase","a bowl of rotten fruit","the thin stump of a tree").
[[Go right?]<right5|
[Go left?]<left5|]<directions5|](click: ?right4)[(set: $direction to "right")[(replace: ?directions3)[(show: ?turn4)]]](click: ?left4)[(set: $direction to "left")[(replace: ?directions4)[(show: ?turn4)]]]|turn5)[-
You turn $direction.
On the far wall is [[a door that appears to be made of bread->room7 (edible room)]].](click: ?right5)[(set: $direction to "right")[(replace: ?directions5)[(show: ?turn5)]]](click: ?left5)[(set: $direction to "left")[(replace: ?directions5)[(show: ?turn5)]]]
(set: $lastroom to 3)You shoulder your way through the door without much effort. It swings out as you bump into it, and you step on through.
For a moment, you can't see anything at all. Your eyes are struck with dazzling light, and you bring your hands up to shade them. When your vision clears, you see that it's sunlight reflecting off an expanse of golden sand that stretches out as far as you can see in every direction. The sky above you is a piercing blue, the sun beating down from directly overhead.
It is noon in the desert.
There are no signs of civilization here as far as you can tell. There is life here, at least--you can see cacti sprouting out of the sand, arranged in a way that suggests a path going straight forward, walled off on either side by patches of them. Some are short, some scraggly and tall, some topped with brightly colored little flowers.
You walk forward.
You're not quite sure how much time passes as you go, but the sun seems to move in the sky at an unusually fast rate. You can watch it sinking (what must be) west towards the horizon, the bright blue of the sky dimming to a shade tinged faintly with lavender. The cacti get bigger the further along you walk, until they're nearly as big as trees.
Far off in the distance to your right, you see an oasis, exactly how you would imagine it--a pool of water ringed by rocks and scraggly trees. You have a deep feeling, though, that if you leave the path you'll be lost.
You walk forward.
As the sun dips further, turning the sky a radiant pink-orange, you see a door in the distance, a white speck on the horizon. It looms surprisingly fast as you approach, grows larger and larger in size as the sky turns violet and then navy blue and then deepest black, the stars more brilliant than you've ever seen.
There's nothing to do but [[walk->exit14]].
(if: $lastroom is 11)[You absolutely book it to the door, not looking back even for a second at the man screaming in the center of the room. You practically launch yourself at the curtains, and they part around you with no resistance. You go sprawling on the floor on the other side. In the second before the curtains pull themselves shut, you see the man in the other room still standing there in the center, screaming, his hands clawing at his cheeks.
The curtains close. The screaming stops. You lie there for a second to wait for your ears to stop ringing. They don't.
You don't know what that was all about.]
You are in a theater. Like one of those places they put on plays. You're on a stage with a wood-paneled floor, scuffed in places and marked with gaffer tape. The red curtains you came through take up the place where a back wall would normally be, and the set of black stage curtains is drawn open, letting you see partway into the backstage area. Only a few of the stage lights are on.
Out in the audience, you can see rows and rows of empty chairs. For a second, you think you see people scattered about in seats in the first few rows, but when you squint you see that they're only blank-faced store mannequins, slumped motionless in their chairs. You don't love that, but it can't be the weirdest thing you've seen recently. There is no entrance at the back of the theater where it would normally be.
Off to the left, into one part of the backstage area, you can see a door into what you think is a dressing room. To your right, through the darkness on the other side, you can see the faint red glow of an exit sign.
[[Go left?]<left|
[Go right?]<right|]<directions|
(click: ?left)[(replace: ?directions)[-
You make your way towards the dressing room. There's a star on the door reflecting the lights overhead. The name written above it is gibberish--you can't make anything out no matter how you focus your eyes on it.
The dressing room door is cracked open. You shoulder your way through.
The dressing room is more brightly lit than the theater. It looks the way you might expect a dressing room in a place like this to look--there's a big mirror on one of the walls, a table scattered with makeup and items for the application thereof, wigs resting on mannequin heads, a rack of costumes pushed against the wall, shoes tucked haphazardly under the vanity table.(if: $hat is 1)[
You look in the mirror. Finally, you observe that you do look pretty good in that hat.
]Tacked up on the wall opposite the mirror are posters advertising productions of musicals you've never heard of. You're not sure if this is the weirdness of the house or your overall lack of musical theater knowledge.
On the far side of the wall is a door leading out of the dressing room: [[a thin, wooden door->room14 (desert room)]], only anchored in place on one side, like the kind that would let you into an old-timey saloon.]]
(click: ?right)[(replace: ?directions)[-
Yeah, you just want to get out of here before the mannequins get up and start moving or something.
The wing you make your way into, following the dull light of the exit sign, is dark. You narrowly avoid tripping over lighting wires a few times, and bruise your hip bumping into some sort of big box.
You feel an orchestra start to play, back on stage. You turn back, but the gap between the curtains has shrunk into a vague haze of light. You can't see anything that might be producing the noise. Maybe the mannequins have taken up instruments.
You pick up the pace a little bit. The red glow of the exit sign resolves itself into letters, and when you get close enough you can see the door it's marking: [[a glossy white one->room16 (space room)]] that looks like an airlock door on a spaceship in a high-budget scifi movie.]]
(set: $lastroom to 15)(if: $lastroom is 7)[You ungracefully vault yourself through the opening you've created in the $food, landing heavily on the floor in the next room.]
This room is empty besides the naked man standing silently in the center.
He is bald, his eyes wide and bloodshot, his frame bordering on--but not quite--skeletal. His arms are down by his sides, fingers twitching against his thighs. He is looking directly at you.
[oh my god go back]<aah|(click-replace: ?aah)[When you turn around the opening you came through is gone because of course it is. You whip your head back around. The man is still staring at you silently, lips pursed tightly.
[(if: $hat is 1)[Give the man your hat?]<hat|
[Make a break for one of the doors?]<run|]<options|
(click: ?hat)[(replace: ?options)[No you're not going to give him your hat. What is wrong with you.
]]
(click: ?run)[(replace: options)[To your right there is [a plain, white-painted door with a dark wooden knob]<door1|. It evokes in you a feeling of deja vu that you can't quite describe.
Directly forward, on the other side of the man, is [a set of lush red velvet curtains]<door2| that you assume, based on prior experience, lead to a door.]]]
(click: ?door1)[-
You hesitantly inch your way to the right. As soon as you take a step, the man's lip quivers and he begins to *scream*, a high-pitched, throat-tearing sound that makes you clap your hands over your ears without even thinking. He still doesn't move.
[[[Book it!->room12 (your bedroom)]]]]
(click: ?door2)[-
You hesitantly inch your way to the left, hoping to go around the him. As soon as you take a step, the man's lip quivers and he begins to *scream*, a high-pitched, throat-tearing sound that makes you clap your hands over your ears without even thinking. He still doesn't move.
[[[Book it!->room15 (theater)]]]]
(set: $lastroom to 11)(if: $lastroom is 11)[You absolutely book it to the door, not looking back even for a second at the man screaming in the center of the room. You practically launch yourself at the door, groping for the handle and then throwing your body weight against it. It swings abruptly open, sending you sprawling on the floor on the other side. In the second before it closes yourself, you see the man in the other room still standing there in the center, screaming, his hands clawing at his cheeks.
The door shuts. The screaming stops. You lie there for a second to wait for your ears to stop ringing. They don't.
You don't know what that was all about.]
You are in a bedroom.
You are in your bedroom. The one you lived in when you were a kid.
The bed is the same, and the bedspread, and the lamp that's throwing soft yellow light onto the room. The posters dotting the walls are the same, and the articles scattered across the desk are the same, and the clothes you've left strewn across the floor are the same, and the old bulky little television set on the far wall is the same. Just over the ringing of your ears, you can just barely hear your mom talking from the hallway or the kitchen, maybe on the phone.
The nostalgia makes your chest ache.
There is only one door leading out of this room--a glossy white one that looks like an airlock door on a spaceship in a high-budget scifi movie. If you wanted to leave now, you could just walk over, but you don't want to quite yet.
It's so easy to get absorbed in memories. You brush your fingers over the bedspread--it's cold, like it hasn't been slept in for a while. You're struck with a memory of staying home sick and lying in this bed watching shitty cartoons. The bookshelf makes you think of coming home from school on the day of a book fair and carefully putting away your new acquisitions. The rug makes you think of all the time you spilled things on it and then tried to clean it up so your parents wouldn't get mad.
The door is where your closet would be. You wonder what would be hanging in there if it wasn't.
There's nothing left for you here but [[the airlock->room16 (space room)]].
(set: $lastroom to 12)(if: $lastroom is 6)[Feeling adventurous, you swim your way toward the bread door. It sits there in the water like a huge piece of sandwich bread, lined with brown crust, with a flaky handle.
As soon as your hand touches the door, it falls apart the same way you might expect bread floating in water to do, crumbling into mush that floats away behind you. The fish seem extremely interested in this new food source.
A current rushes into you gently from behind, pushing you forward through the newly open doorway, and you go tumbling out of the water into air and onto soft ground.]
This room is edible. Or at least, it looks edible. You haven't tried. The floor you're lying on is made of some sort of marshmallow-like material.(if: $wet is 1)[ It sticks to your wet clothes as you push yourself up.] Each wall seems to be constructed out of something different--the one you just came through is made of bread, which seems to have resealed itself since you came tumbling through it a few seconds ago.
The whole room has a cloying, candy-sweet smell to it. You feel your stomach rumble curiously.
The wall to your left is made of what looks like a thousand strips of beef jerky, all stuck together and dangling partway off the wall like so many cilia. The far wall is one giant rectangular cookie, chocolate chip, warm and soft and inviting, the chocolate gooey enough that rivulets threaten to trickle down onto the floor.
Above your head dangles a chandelier fashioned artfully out of spun sugar.
There are no doors anywhere in this place, as far as you can see. If you want to continue, you're probably going to have to make your own way out.
[[Jerky wall?]<jerky|
[Cookie wall?]<cookie|]<food|
(click: ?jerky)[(replace: ?food)[-
You've never been much of a dessert person. You approach the left wall, the soft floor bouncing gently underneath your feet, and attempt to rip off a handful. It doesn't budge--the jerky is firmly anchored.
You resign yourself to the fact that you have to [use your mouth]<mouth|.
(click: ?mouth)[You lean forward and bite a chunk out of the jerky. It tastes, thankfully, like jerky. After a few bites you realize you're sick of the taste of jerky and just start spitting it out on the floor. The room apparently finds this acceptable. Soon enough, you have [[a hole->room11 (room with a man in it)]] roughly big enough for a person around your size to ungracefully vault themselves through. Through it, you can see nothing but a haze.(set: $food to "jerky")
]]]
(click: ?cookie)[(replace: ?food)[-
Cookies feel safe, somehow. You approach the front wall, the floor sending you forward in bouncy little bounds, and attempt to rip off a chunk. You get your fingers into the body of the cookie and try to pull, but nothing budges an inch.
You resign yourself to the fact that you have to [use your mouth]<mouth|.
(click: ?mouth)[You lean forward and bite a chunk out of the cookie. It tastes, thankfully, like cookie. After a few bites you realize you're sick of the taste of cookie and just start spitting it out on the floor. The room apparently finds this acceptable. Soon enough, you have [[a hole->room8 (shape room)]] roughly big enough for a person around your size to ungracefully vault themselves through. Through it, you can see the vague impressions of shapes. (set: $food to "cookie")
]]]
(set: $lastroom to 7)(if: $lastroom is 15)[You turn the wheel on the airlock, grunting a little with the effort as it sticks on your first try. As soon as it begins to turn, though, the door lets out a little hiss of air as it first cracks, then swings open into the next room. You are pulled with it, your hands still on the wheel, and then pulled further still as if with the force of a vacuum, tumbling head over heel into the next room.
You don't hit the ground.
You are floating in space.
The airlock remains open behind you--you can still dimly see the theater's dark curtains--but you are floating gently and inexorably away.]
(if: $lastroom is 12)[You turn the wheel on the airlock, grunting a little with the effort as it sticks on your first try. As soon as it begins to turn, though, the door lets out a little hiss of air as it first cracks, then swings open into the next room. You are pulled with it, your hands still on the wheel, and then pulled further still as if with the force of a vacuum, tumbling head over heel into the next room.
You don't hit the ground.
You are floating in space.
The airlock remains open behind you--you can still see the dimly lit space of your bedroom--but you are floating gently and inexorably away.]
You think you read in a book once that going into space without a spacesuit would kill you instantly in one way or another--freezing your blood or the air in your lungs or both. That doesn't seem to have happened yet. You take an experimental breath. It seems fine. It's not even that cold, really--you wish you had a jacket, but you certainly aren't freezing. Just floating further and further away from the door, doing little somersaults in the air, away into the vast blackness dotted with pinpricks of light.
You're not sure how long you're floating for before the scenery changes--after some amount of time, you begin to drift past chunks of floating rocl. You see a satellite in the near distance. Eventually you come up on a moon, much smaller than you figure the actual moon (like our moon, the Earth's moon) must be. Your feet nearly brush its surface as your drift past, but you miss it just barely, and there's nothing you can do to get closer. You feel like there's a metaphor somewhere in there.
You keep floating.
You pass planets that look nothing like the pictures you've seen in books about the solar system. There's no way they should be as close together as they seem, based on your knowledge of astronomy. You drift past a star, and feel the same pleasant glow of warmth that you feel standing in the sun on a warm spring day.
You keep floating.
You see a door.
It's the same glowing white as the faraway stars in the distance--a rectangle of pure white nothingness looming slowly closer as you drift in its direction. For a moment you fear missing it by inches--drifting just past it and continuing off into space forever--but you can quickly tell it's directly in your path.
There is nothing to do but [[wait->exit16]].(if: $lastroom is 7)[You ungracefully vault yourself through the opening you've created in the $food, landing heavily on the floor in the next room.]
The haze has resolved itself into a swirling cloud of geometric forms. This room is full of shapes, shifting and twirling around you, occasionally blinking out of sight as their two-dimensionality dictates. A blue triangle drifts lazily in front of your eyes. You look down. All you can see behind the moving shapes is a formless white void, but there is a red circle directly under your feet holding you up. If you look forward, you can make out a walkway of shapes, urging you on forward.
You bat the triangle out of the way--it goes spinning gently away into the distance--and walk.
The house has been quiet, for the most part, but this room is almost oppressive in its silence. The shapes don't make any noise as they drift around, colliding with each other and careening off into infinity. The shapes on the floor don't make any noise when you step on them, either. It makes you feel like you're standing on nothing at all, which puts a knot in your stomach.
As you traverse the path, the shapes grow in size--triangles and squares give way to hexagons and septagons and octagons. You try and grab onto a red octagon as it floats past you, just to see if you can, but it slips through your fingers like water.
At a certain point, you notice that the color of the void around you has begun to shift from bleak white to pale gold--and now that you've noticed, it changes again, tinging towards icy blue, then a soft sort of purple. In the changing light(?), the shapes take on a reflective quality, ceasing to remain any one color at all. Your eyes have trouble focusing on any one shape now that they're no longer clearly delineated, and the room itself becomes a slowly shifting, swirling mass of color.
It's beautiful.
You don't know how long you walk upon the pathway--it could be minutes, could be hours. Your feet never start to hurt, your legs never get tired. After this indefinity of time, a dot of white appears as though over an invisible horizon, bright against the dusky rosy-silver-violet of the room. It looms as you approach, a door-shaped rectangle of purest nothing, gently aglow. This door is not like the others. You know this without knowing how. This is the way out.
[[It's time to go.->exit8]](if: $lastroom is 2)[You hold your breath, since it never hurts to be careful, and step into the creek. You can see the ground like an inch below the water, smooth stones stuck in the mud, but what you can see doesn't stop you from tumbling into the water like you just stepped into the deep end of the pool.
It's a good thing you know how to swim.
The water blurs your vision, leaving the doorway you're sinking towards--still full of bottom-of-the-ocean darkness--the only thing you can make out. You look up. The daytime brightness of the forest is nowhere in sight, nothing but water above you and water to the side and water below, and also this door.
As soon as your feet drift through the doorway, you feel a lurch of nausea in your stomach as the entire world reorients itself around you and "down" becomes "forward." You slide the rest of the way through the door with the momentum of a child being pushed down a Slip'N'Slide, except you're still underwater.]
This whole room is underwater. {(if: $lastroom is 2)[As soon as your head stops spinning from the sudden gravitational shift, you realize that your vision is suddenly much, much clearer in there than it was in the creek.](else:)[Despite the fact that you would generally say that you have normal human eyes, your vision is shockingly clear down here--you can see everything.]} The room is a cube of clean angles, full of water so perfectly lukewarm you can barely feel it, with a door (you turn around to check) on every wall but the one you just came through. All around you, small, brightly-colored fish swim lazily around, making you feel like you're inside an aquarium. Or like in one of those fishtanks at PetCo.
Also you can't hold your breath for that long so you should probably get out of here fast.
The [[door to your left->room5 (ice room)]] is a frame that looks as though it's made of solid ice. Despite the clarity of the rest of the room, the only thing you can make out is a haze of sparkling white.
The [[door to your right->room7 (edible room)]] looks like it's made of...
Bread???
Ok.
The [[door in front of you->room10 (the library)]] is a stately-looking set of carved wooden double doors with curved silver handles.
(set: $lastroom to 6)
(set: $wet to 1)a house with 14 rooms in it
a game by DJ Williams
[[Play?->room1 (starter room)]]The door is bigger than you expected it to be from afar--it takes longer to reach than you would have thought, though you're still not quite sure how long, and when you stand in front of it the top edge reaches nearly twice your height. If you reached your arms out to the sides you'd still be able to walk through.
If you go through this door, you will leave the house. You will return to wherever you were before, though I can't say where that might be. If you come back, it will not be the same. If you don't come back, it will not be the same. Nothing is ever quite as you remember it, not even memories.
There is nothing to do but go through this door, though. You've learned by now that there's no going back.
[[You step through.->title page]]The door is bigger than you expected it to be from afar--it takes longer to reach than you would have thought, though you're still not quite sure how long, and when you are nearly through the top edge reaches nearly twice your height. If you reached your arms out to the sides you'd still be able to float through without trouble.
If you go through this door, you will leave the house. You will return to wherever you were before, though I can't say where that might be. If you come back, it will not be the same. If you don't come back, it will not be the same. Nothing is ever quite as you remember it, not even memories.
There is nothing to do but go through this door, though. You couldn't stop even if you tried.
[[You float through.->title page]]The door is bigger than you expected it to be from afar--it takes longer to reach than you would have thought, though you're still not quite sure how long, and when you stand in front of it the top edge reaches nearly twice your height. If you reached your arms out to the sides you'd still be able to walk through.
If you go through this door, you will leave the house--if house is the right word in the first place. You will return to wherever you were before, though I can't say where that might be. If you come back, it will not be the same. If you don't come back, it will not be the same. Nothing is ever quite as you remember it, not even memories.
There is nothing to do but go through this door, though. You've learned by now that there's no going back.
[[You step through.->title page]]