[Pilot] The witch's cursed escape room

Why hello there! Just as I'd mentioned in my monthly update, I decided to to go through some of my old and/or unfinished projects and share

Why hello there! Just as I'd mentioned in my monthly update, I decided to to go through some of my old and/or unfinished projects and share them with ya'll. Starting with something that was meant to release in a 2022 Halloween story bundle, but I never finished it. Here's the three initial chapters that I had written back then.

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Synopsis:

A group of friends decides to go to the famous witch’s cursed escape room. Nobody could predict just what effects the curse would have on them.

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1 - My immersion!

It was more like a mansion than a house. Standing on top of a hill, made of dark stone, and having a permanent dark cloud above it as well as the fog hugging it made it look quite spooky. The witch really knew how to set the atmosphere.

“Well damn. This looks even more authentic in real life than in the pictures!” Ryan exclaimed as he scanned the building up and down. Just as enthusiastic as ever.

“It’s more like a vampire’s mansion though…” Alice commented.

I idly nodded to both their thoughts while nervously wondering just what kind of curses would befall us. The website had kept saying it was all perfectly safe and stuff but still…

“Well, let’s go! I can’t wait for this!”

With Ryan’s words, our group finally stopped admiring the architecture and approached the spooky place.

A short walk through spiderweb and prop-filled garden later and we found ourselves in front of the giant door. The lion head-shaped door knocker kept the immersion going. After a brief glance at each other, Ryan stepped up, grabbed the thing, and knocked on the door.

A second later, the lion’s eyes lit up and looked at us. I jumped just a little bit.

“Ahh, visitors? What can I do for you? Are you here for the cafe? The magic lessons? Or perhaps… do you wish to brave the witch’s curse?” it said in an echoing deep voice.

After a short pause to recover from the surprise, Ryan answered, “The curse, yeah! We’re here for the escape room!”

“I see… Very well,” the lion said before the door opened inwards, revealing a long corridor. “Follow this path and you shall meet the witch.”

We once again shared a glance. Ryan and Alice were grinning from ear to ear, but I still felt a tad uneasy.

As we entered, the door immediately closed behind us, making me jump once more.

“Good luck,” the voice said again.

A moment of silence later, Ryan spoke again, “Daaamn… this is so well made.”

“Heck yes! I’m so hyped right now!” Alice added.

I opted to stay silent as the two gushed about how realistic everything was.

We made our way through the empty, dim-lit, doorless, snaking corridor that made no sense whatsoever and eventually arrived at the end. A simple door stood in our way. Ryan didn’t hesitate, grabbed the handle, and opened it, revealing…

“W-Welcome customers…” said the woman dressed in stereotypical witch clothes… while holding her head and looking like she was barely standing on her feet.

“Um… hello. Are you okay?” Alice asked.

“I’m fine! Just… a bit of a headache.” the witch looked down for a second. “But whatever! You’re here for the escape room, right?”

“Uh, yeah. We are. We’re booked for ten AM. Under the name Miner,” Ryan replied. The broken immersion was painfully obvious on his face.

“Right, right… Let me just…” the witch walked over to the desk in the middle of the room, still holding her head, grabbing the open book and searching for something in it with her index finger. “Ah, here. Miner.” She nodded to herself.

“Alright, I just need you to quickly read through something and sign it, and then we can begin,” she said before pulling out three papers and handing them to each of us.

It was a simple information leaflet with ‘your signature here’ at the bottom. It explained things about the curse, the escape room, what we should do in case of emergencies…

Well… The immersion was fully and truly broken at this point. But I wasn’t complaining. Safety was important, after all. Especially when messing around with magic.

Once everyone signed the papers, the witch took them from us and put them somewhere in a drawer. “Alright, if you’re ready, I’ll put the curse on you and transport you to the starting room,” she announced.

“Alright, ready,” Alice confirmed.

“Yeah, let’s go!” Ryan exclaimed, his enthusiasm returning.

I looked over at the witch who was clearly in pain, and said, “You should really take some aspirin and lay down…”

The witch seemed to be surprised by my suggestion for a moment before softly laughing. “Thank you. I will do just that after I send you off. Now, are you ready?”

“Ready.” I nodded.

She nodded back. “Then, let’s get started.”

She grabbed a thick book with strange markings off the side of the table, opened it and it began floating as its pages glowed. She then began chanting words in a strange language. A moment later, the ground beneath our feet lit up. A circle with various shapes and odd text appeared and the light began engulfing us.

I panicked for a moment before assuring myself that this was supposed to be happening, closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

The witch’s voice finally reached a crescendo and one yell later, I felt magic permeate my entire body before the world blacked out.

2 - My body!

When I came to, I felt surprisingly relaxed. No aching, no brain fog… None of the stuff my grumpy mornings were usually made up of.

I opened my eyes and found that I was on top of a bed. How nice of the witch.

I tried getting up, but as I did, I felt something was off about my body. There was extra weight on my chest.

I froze up and slowly glanced down to see… two big bulges. Breasts.

“Uh…” I let out in a much lighter voice than I was used to. “What?!” I squeaked.

I froze for a second.

I had been turned into a girl. What happened?

The curse? Was that my curse? Turned into a girl? Huh…

….

That… I was surprisingly alright with this? Yeah, that wasn’t bad at all. I could deal with this. Better than turning into an animal, or growing another set of arms, or some other possible curses I had read about…

“I expected something much worse…” I whispered to myself.

After nearly instantly coming to terms with my sudden sex change, I looked up and immediately spotted a full-body mirror. Naturally, something like that was too much for me to resist and I immediately got out of bed and stood in front of it.

People had often called me effeminate. My small frame, my silky black hair, my smooth face… But as a girl, all of those were even more evident. I… looked really pretty. Gorgeous almost. Even with the baggy clothes I had on me, I lost myself in my own reflection for a moment, mesmerized by what I was seeing. It made me… happy. In an odd way I couldn’t put my finger on.

“Hey, over here!” a voice finally tore me out of my daydream.

My head spun around to search for the source. I recognized the voice. It belonged to Alice, although something about it sounded a bit off.

“Alice? Where are you?” I scanned the room, my eyes brushing past the furniture, the props, and what I could only assume to be various puzzles, but Alice was nowhere to be found.

“Down here!” the voice resounded again, making me finally pinpoint the source.

I looked at the table that had a small cage on it. My eyes had glossed over it before, but now that I focused on it…

“Alice?!”

…My friend was inside the cage. And she was tiny. My eyes bulged out as I knelt down to look closer at her.

My usually-taller-than-everyone-else-in-the-room friend was now palm-sized, standing right next to an equally tiny bed where she’d probably woken up. She almost looked like a doll, what with her shoulder-length blond hair, and the blue dress she’d opted to wear today.

“Yeah, I… Wait, how do you know my…” she began speaking, before stopping, looking me over, and widening her eyes as well. “Wait! No way! Is that you?! The curse turned you into a girl?!”

“Uh, yeah…” I scratched the back of my head whilst a small smile found its way onto my face. “And it turned you tiny.” I pointed at her.

“Yeah! I’m no longer the resident giraffe girl!” She laughed. “But why the heck am I in this cage?! Do I look like a bird?! Dammit, witch!”

I had to admit, she was quite adorable, squeaking in her slightly higher-pitched voice with an angry expression. Of course, I would never say that out loud.

I carefully picked up the cage, making sure not to rock it too much, and said, “I bet this is one of the puzzles. We have to find a way to get you out.”

“Hmm, yeah, I guess.”

I turned the cage around and found a heart-shaped keyhole. “Here it is. A keyhole. Now we just need a key and…” I stopped myself as I realized something. “Oh yeah! Where is Ryan?”

I looked the room over once more, searching for anything that could potentially be him. Transformed into a piece of furniture? Invisible? Turned tiny like Alice? No, the curse would probably be different…

And then…

“Maybe here…?” An echoey whisper resounded in the room.

I jumped, only barely managing to keep a hold of the birdcage I was holding. Right after I quickly made sure Alice was alright, I whirled around at the source of the voice.

And there he was. Ryan. Except… glowing, floating, colored light blue, and phasing through the wall.

“Oh, uh, hi there. Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, clearly not recognizing me.

Both me and Alice stayed silent for a moment, staring at Ryan’s ghost.

“Oh my god! They killed Ryan!” Alice then squeaked.

“Wha– no! I’m not actually dead! It’s just the curse!” Ryan assured before frowning and looking around the room. “Wait, who said that?”

A second later, his eyes settled on the cage in my hands.

“Alice?!” His ghastly form floated over. “You’re tiny!”

“No shit, Sherlock!”

“Wait, but then that means…” He lifted his eyes and rested them on me, while his jaw went slack.

“Hey… I’m, uh, a girl now,” I gave him an awkward smile.

He floated there for a second before saying, “Huh… Well, that’s… oddly fitting.”

I stopped and stared at him, not sure what to think about that comment.

“And you too! You were always complaining about wanting to be shorter!” He pointed at the cage.

“Well, yeah, but not this short!” Alice shouted up at him.

Ryan sighed theatrically. “Women. Never satisfied with anything.”

“Har har! What are you supposed to be anyway? The ghost of Christmas past?”

“Phe! Who cares about Christmas! It’s Halloween! I’m the ghost of Halloween present!”

“Hmm…” Alice looked him up and down. “Nah, you’re too blue to be Halloween-themed. Totally Christmas ghost right there.” She nodded to herself. 

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Well, anyway.” Ryan looked back at me. “So you’re a girl…” He looked back down into the cage. “You’re… Tinkerbell.”

“...And you got murdered and turned into a ghost!” Alice finished for him. “Don’t worry! We will avenge you!”

Ryan laughed at that and it got me to quirk a smile too.

“Well, they did say that the curses were often weird. But hey, this is fine.” Ryan pointed behind him. “In fact, I think I already found our first clue.”

“Oh? What is it?”

“Come with me,” Ryan said as he floated back from where he’d come.

We followed him.

3 - My Rubick’s cube!

The three of us stared at the wall from where Ryan had emerged.

“I don’t know, wasn’t this supposed to be an escape room? Having multiple rooms is cheating!” Alice squeaked from her cage.

“Nah, it’s not another room. It’s more like a closet or something. There were some puzzles inside I think,” Ryan explained.

“But how do we get inside?” I asked, looking around the perfectly smooth wall. “There’s no handles, no buttons…”

“It’s a trick! There’s a secret button somewhere.” Ryan grinned. “Hold on.” He poked his head through the wall for a moment before returning to us. “Yeah, it’s right here.” He pointed at a part of the wall that looked identical to the rest.

“There’s nothing there, though…?” I kneeled down and inspected it.

“Try touching it or something?”

I did.

The wall gave in, letting me push a cube-sized piece of it inside. Once I pushed it as far as I could, the wall moved.

“Whoa?!” I jumped back.

“Uwaah?!” Alice screamed as her cage swayed to the side.

“Oh, sorry!” I apologized and carefully stopped the cage’s movement again.

The wall flashed blue before splitting in the middle and opening like automatic sliding doors, revealing a whole slew of stuff inside the closet.

“A… bed? What’s this for?” Alice asked whilst pointing at the out-of-place bed below the shelves.

“Oh, that’s where I woke up,” Ryan replied.

“Wait, you woke up in a bed too? How did you not phase through it or something?”

“Eh… Magic?” Ryan shrugged.

“Or rather…” I spoke up. “Now that you mention it. You’re a ghost, aren’t you? You can just phase through stuff.”

“Well, yeah?”

“Then how is this an escape room for you at all? Can’t you just… leave? Through the walls?”

“Nah, I tried going the other way but there’s some kind of barrier over there. I’m stuck here just like you.”

“Ah, right. Makes sense.” I nodded to myself. “Anyway… What’s all this?” I asked as we focused our attention on all the stuff stashed away on the shelves.

There were books, boxes of all sizes, cutlery, and a whole slew of other props. One item, in particular, caught my eye though. A… Rubick’s cube. Or at least something similar to that. The difference was that the faces also had various symbols on them and the entire thing was partially transparent. And in the middle…

“A key?” Ryan asked. “Do you reckon it’s to the cage? It looks like it could fit…”

“Hopefully! I’m getting tired of being the resident hamster in a cage.”

“Hmm… I’m not very good at these…” I mumbled as I glanced at my friends.

And then I realized… Ryan couldn’t touch things and Alice was one, smaller than the cube, and two, still in the cage.

I sighed. This part was mine.

“Alright, let’s do this then,” I said whilst walking back to the big room and placing the cage back on the table. Then, with the cube in my hands, I sat down next to the cage and started trying to solve it.

Ryan floated closer and Alice looked out from the cage. Even though I was the one holding the puzzle, it was still a team effort.

Luckily, Ryan knew his way around regular Rubick’s cubes, so he guided me through the basics. From then on, it took us a bit to figure out all the magic infused into the thing. Alice helped a ton with that.

“So, when you line up the Brush symbols, it recolors their pieces… And then lining up the whirlpools rotates the whole thing…”

“God… It’s like a 4D Rubik’s cube or something…” I groaned.

“Hey, it’s not that bad!” Ryan said. “Even four by four by four is probably harder than this.”

I shook my head and kept fiddling with the damn thing, trying out what the rest of the symbols did.

“Oh wait… I got it. This is super easy actually,” Alice suddenly announced.

Ryan and I both looked up at her, disbelieving.

“Here, look!” She pointed at the brush symbol again. “This thing recolors the entire face. And then here–” She pointed at the arrow in a circle symbol. “-- This one recolors all pieces to the next color! So all we have to do is set it up to color all faces the same color, and then keep swapping the colors until we get it!”

It took me a good moment to wrap my head around it. Once I did, I felt dumb.

“What the hell! That’s so dumb!” Ryan threw up his hands. “That’s just cheesing it! This thing isn’t a Rubik’s cube at all!”

I snorted at his outburst even as I already worked on the solution Alice proposed.

“Well, yeah! It was a red herring! Classic!” Alice laughed at him.

A few minutes of fiddling later, I found the perfect setup to do what Alice had come up with. A few twists later and we had a solved Rubick’s cube.

The entire thing then glowed for a second before popping and disappearing, leaving just the key in my hands.

“Well… the moment of truth,” I said while lifting up the key toward the cage’s lock.

It fit.

One click later and the cage door was opened and Alice was free again.

“Freedooom!” she yelled as she ran out of the cage on top of the table with her arms spread out.

“Phew! Step one done!” Ryan mimicked wiping sweat off his forehead. “First time I see an escape room having step one being freeing your teammate.”

With Alice free, we continued searching for the next puzzle to solve.

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And that's it! You can probably guess the broad strokes of how the story would continue and what kind of impact this experience would have on the main character even post-escape room, since it's something I'd written during my own transition. :P
Will I ever finish writing this? Probably not, but that was why I at least wanted to share it, just in case some of you find it interesting or inspiring in any way.
Anyway, toodles!