The Game (Fiction)

The door opened and all the boys could see, was a myriad of grey and black cats. They must have been in the tens or even hundreds cause you could barely pass the room without stepping on one of their tails. This was the seventh room they were entering without knowing, how many doors were waiting for them to be opened, until they finally exited this peculiar game. What started as something fun, interesting and enjoyable has turned into a nightmare.

Jamie, Gary, Mike and Daren entered the game two days ago. They thought it will last for a couple of hours. Now here they were in this totally insane environment, going through all kinds of challenges, opening one door after another without being able to get to the end. At least they were together which made things a bit easier. When one of them was down, the others jumped in to motivate him to continue the game.

What took this game to the next level was the fact that once started in a team of four, you could only end the game in the same team of four. There was no other option.

Here they were in this poorly lighted room with all these cats and no exit door to be found. The four started tapping on the walls, looking for uneven surfaces but the strategy wasn’t pending out this time. Mike started jumping on the floor, Daren looked up the ceiling hoping to find some clues while Gary and Jamie were walking slowly amongst the cats in the hopes of spotting a gateway.

Out of the blue, Gary shouted: “The cat over there has a key attached sideways on his frontal leg. Can you guys see it?”

Jamie was the first one to reach the cat, so he grabbed the key and showed it to the rest of the team. “What now? Where should we insert this key?”

This is when Mike noticed a little hole in the wall across the door they entered. “Guys, over there. There is something in that hole. We need to find out what it is.”

As they were pulling a rectangular rubber box out of that tiny hole wondering how somebody got it inside there in the first place, they knew the key was meant for it. They popped up the box and found a piece of paper with a few lines on it. It read as follows:

“Chop the wood, prepare the fireplace
Make the kitten dance in a square
Decipher the shadows as they appear
Find the code to exit the game.”

Was this really the last chamber in the game?

Did they make it to the final quiz or was this just another trick to keep their heads spinning while playing with their feelings and emotions?

One thing was for sure: They had to crack the code to either finish this game they were trapped in or be able to move forward to another room in the hopes of exiting then.

The boys looked around the room and all they could see except the cats were walls of stone, a granite floor and a glass ceiling. So, where should they get the wood then?

What if the wood needed for the fireplace was a metaphor? What could this word represent? What if the entire sentence had a totally different meaning?

Mike was the first to express his opinion. “Why not focus on the second sentence which would lead us to come up with something creative that would make the cats dance?”

Jamie jumped in saying “Cats are very sensitive to sound. Let’s sing something, maybe try out different tunes and see which one resonates most with them. Who knows how long they’ve been held in this room and are eager to hear something else except their own howling.”

After singing different songs they noticed some of the cats moving closer to each other and forming some interesting patterns. This is when Gary came up with the idea to look on the different walls and see whether they can find a particular pattern amongst the shadows projected.

As if woken up from the dead, Daren shouted: “Guys, it reads ‘Babylon’. This is it. The code to exit this freaking game is ‘Babylon’.”

Suddenly, the glass ceiling opened up in the middle and a wooden staircase was lowered down. Daren was the first to grab the staircase and climb up. He was so happy to finally end this game and go home, he could barely keep his excitement contained.

Mike was the last to climb up and join the group, wondering why the boys were so quiet up there.

“This can’t be true. You gotta be kidding me” is all you could hear coming out of Mike’s mouth.

Daren, Gary, Jamie and Mike were back in room number one, where the whole game started a couple of days ago.

💎💎💎 Krisz Rokk 💎💎💎

Creative art by Daniela S.

Originally published on the Hive blockchain at @KriszRokk.