It's Up to the Audience!

This introduction might make more sense if you have read the one-shot The Pitch Meeting. -Dee

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The world began as a blank page. It didn’t have the promising feel of fresh parchment or the smell of ink. It was the sterile, flat void of a word processor file. Consciousness flickered on, a single cursor blinking in the overwhelming expanse.

He sat up. The motion felt foreign, a borrowed gesture. His body was a vessel he didn't recognize, a coat he'd just been handed. He looked down at himself. Simple, nondescript clothes. No wallet, no watch, no scars he could feel to tell a story. His hands were smooth, the nails clean. A blank slate.

The room was a perfect cube of white. Walls, floor, ceiling—seamless, without a speck of dust to mar their surface. The only light came from a single fluorescent tube in the middle of the ceiling, humming a monotonous, electric lullaby. The other two slots were empty, dark sockets like vacant eyes.

A door. Solid. Flush with the wall. Beside it, a small red keypad glowed. Red, the first bit of color he'd seen in the room. Four dashes: _ _ _ _. A challenge he couldn't comprehend. His fingers trembled as he pressed a few random numbers. 1-2-3-4. The keypad buzzed, a harsh, metallic rejection. 9-8-7-6. Another buzz. The sound grated on his nerves, a tiny, electric insect.

His gaze swept the room. Opposite the door, a white desk. An empty, flat top, as welcoming as a morgue slab. He tried the drawers. Locked. All of them. They refused to yield, their handles cool and unyielding against his grip.

The remaining two walls held picture frames. Large, ornate things, yet painted the same featureless white as everything else. They were windows to nowhere, frames around nothing. They felt like a joke, a mockery of memory. He stared at one, trying to remember a face, a landscape, anything that might belong in its empty space. Nothing came. The emptiness inside him was mirrored in the frames.

Frustration, hot and sharp, clawed its way up his throat. He slammed a fist against the door, the dull thud swallowed by the room's oppressive acoustics.

"What am I supposed to do!" The words tore from him, raw and ****. They echoed slightly, then died, absorbed by the white walls.

Silence. The hum of the light.

Then, a new sound. A soft, distinct *click*.

He froze, every muscle tensing. He held his breath, straining to hear past the frantic thumping of his own heart. The sound had come from behind him. He turned slowly.

The center drawer of the white desk was no longer flush with its housing. It was slightly ajar, a sliver of darkness beckoning from the sterile perfection of the room. A sliver of possibility.

He approached cautiously, his feet making no sound on the floor. He pulled the drawer open. It slid smoothly on its runners. Inside, on the bare wood, lay a single, folded piece of paper.

His hands, surprisingly steady, reached for it. The paper was thick and heavy. He unfolded it. It was a letter, written in blue ink, in a rather elegant script. The man, glad that he could at least recognize the words, began reading.

Dear Esteemed Guest,

Allow me to be the first to extend our welcome on this fine day. I realize that the method of your transportation may have been a bit disorienting. For that, I apologize. It was a necessary cost to begin your grand adventure here, at the latest and greatest iteration of our chain of exclusive resort hotels. Certain side effects of the process will clear up in time, once you've had a chance to clear your head and take a good, hard look in the mirror. Your first task is to join us and our other guests in the lobby, which you'll find in the next room. I can assure you that everything you need to reach your destination has been supplied, though you may need to look in, on, and under every nook and cranny to find it. If you get stuck, just take a deep breath and let your inner voice guide you. We look forward to greeting you in person soon.

Sincerely,

Dee

IMProduction Manager

Harem Hotel Resorts

"Harem Hotel?" The man said aloud, incredulity threading through his voice. In his mind, flashes of odd, half-remembered stories flitted by; glimpses into a sultan’s private chambers, a young martial artist with multiple suitors chasing after him (or was it her?), an alarming number of high school seniors getting hit by trucks and awakening in fantasy worlds.

He read the letter again, slower this time. The elegant, almost playful script seemed to mock the sterile, prison-like reality of the room. “Resort? Grand adventure?” He crumpled the letter in his fist, the crackle of the heavy paper a satisfyingly sharp sound in the dead air. The flowery words were just another layer of the puzzle.

Take a good, hard look in the mirror.

His eyes shot around the room. A mirror. He hadn't seen a mirror. He went back to the desk, pulling at the other drawers again, this time with more ****. Still locked. He examined the surface of the desk itself, running his palms across its smooth, cool expanse. Nothing. He knelt, peering underneath. A solid block of white. He moved to the walls, tapping them, listening for a hollow echo. Solid. He pressed on the blank picture frames, hoping for a hidden spring. Nothing. He sighed aloud.

Then he heard a crackle, like electricity jumping between the frayed ends of two wires that were close to touching. It was emerging from the ball of paper on the floor, where he had discarded it. He reached for it tentatively, and when he wasn't shocked, he picked it back up and smoothed it out, seeing a new message below the first. This one was in a bright red ink, written in solid, bold strokes that lacked the flourish of the blue pen.

If you're getting tripped up already, you'd better hold on to your ass. This place gets pretty crazy, but I know you can do it!

Vee

Below it, there was another signature. One more to add to the roster. Dee and Vee. The man crumpled the letter again, a fresh wave of anger cresting in him. He hated this. This game. He hated Dee and Vee, even though he had no idea who they were.

He backed up against the wall and slid down until he was seated, wishing he could remember something about himself. Right now, the only thing he suspected was that he hated puzzles. Then he noticed something, a small pressure against the small of his back. He shifted around and felt a small sting, flinching back from the wall. He turned and saw nothing, but then felt around behind him and realized what it was.

"Hold on to your ass..." he grumbled, as he pulled up the band of his white boxer shorts, feeling something small and metallic inside. He tore at the band with his fingers, creating a tear large enough to take what was inside. He found two small, silver keys. He walked over to the desk, feeling a small bit of hope. He tried the drawers on the left side, but neither key worked in either. He held his breath as he tried the right side and let it out in a big sigh when he felt the first key turn in the lock on the bottom drawer. Inside were several items. He took each of them out and set them on the desk before looking at them with some confusion.

A fountain pen, a miniature swivel chair, a binder clip, a stapler, a hole punch, and a small replica of a printer.

"What the actual fuck?" The man groaned out. He checked the rest of the drawer and found nothing, even patting down the underside. He put the remaining key in the thinner top right drawer, which fit perfectly. He slid out the drawer and was surprised when it kept going, far longer than the depth of the desk.

Is it built into the wall? He thought. Then he figured that wasn't in the top 5 weirdest things about this situation, so he ignored it.

Inside was a long fluorescent bulb, this one tinted red. He looked up at the empty slots in the ceiling and figured he should probably insert it, but he didn't know how he'd be able to reach it.

"Wait." He said to himself, looking back at the drawer, its unusual length sparked something, and he also noticed it was shallower than it looked. He continued pulling, and the drawer kept lengthening, until, with a thud, it dropped out of the desk and onto the floor. The man realized he could unfold it to double as a makeshift ladder, as the underside was arranged in rungs.

He set up the seemingly dangerously thin ladder under the right-hand slot, on the same side of the room as the red keypad, figuring that made sense. Surprisingly, the ladder felt sturdy once it had been positioned, and he climbed up to insert the bulb in its slot. The light came on shortly after it was inserted, and added a bright red light to the room, pointed slightly at the nearest wall. This, he noticed, revealed something new in the once-empty picture frame.

As the red light hit the wall, the picture frame that had appeared empty now displayed an image as if the red light had given life to a painting he couldn't see before. He looked it over. A group of 6 people stood in what looked like a modern office, as if posing for a group photo.

The woman on the far left stood out most. While the others looked dressed for office work, she was wearing an odd, light blue dress with a garish pattern. Magenta shoes matched the color of her hair, and bright yellow lipstick adorned her face. She stood beside a woman with fiery red hair, leaning forward to show off some impressive cleavage, and a man who looked very nervous to be having his picture taken, his shaggy brown hair almost covering his eyes and his hands clenched tightly at his sides. Sitting down on his other side was a mature, shapely woman with her arms outstretched, as if offering a hug to the viewer, followed by a blonde-haired woman sitting on a filing cabinet. On the far right, a muscular dark-haired man in a shirt and tie flexed one of his impressive biceps for the camera.

He looked at the bottom of the frame, but it didn't have a nameplate or any other signifier. The man looked them over, hoping he'd recognize someone. Had he ever worked in an office? Had he dated one of them? Was one of them a relative? Did he play canasta with the MILF every Tuesday? He couldn't remember. It was just the 6 strangers staring back at him.

He looked over the keypad and saw that underneath, he could now see a word written, glowing in the red light, "Rejected."

"Why?" He asked aloud, hoping for another message or clue, but this time he was met with only silence. He looked back at the framed photo and felt around it, but the wall felt as smooth as it had before. There were no new seams. It was like the wall had simply become transparent to allow him to see the image on the other side. He looked closely and noted a few things. The cleavage-bearing woman was holding a red clip in her hand, similar to the one in the drawer, and the chair the matronly beauty sat in was a match for the miniature. He went over to the desk and took a closer look at the other objects. The fountain pen was black with a gold tip at either end and a small gold loop in the middle. It matched the hair, shoes, and belt the bespectacled bombshell was wearing. "Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow," he muttered, picking up the small replica of the printer. Would that make the strong man the hole punch and the other the stapler? Was it the other way around?

He arranged the items on the desk in the order that their counterparts appeared in the photo. The printer, the binder clip, the stapler, the chair, the pen, and finally the hole punch. When they were all in place, the man was startled when suddenly the printer made a whirring motion and spat out a page, the size of a Post-it note. He read it.

Open the Stapler!

He proceeded to do so and saw that, rather than the expected staples, two more small keys resided in the chamber. "Now we're talking," he said, as he opened the remaining drawers. The bottom drawer had a note, a candy bar, and a bottle of Snapple. He read the note.

Almost there! You've got this!- Vee

The relentless cheer of this "Vee" person was a bit grating, considering he was one of his captors. He set the drink and candy aside and opened the final drawer, not terribly surprised to see another fluorescent bulb, this one blue.

Moving the ladder underneath the last slot, he climbed up and inserted the blue bulb, assuming that it would reveal another painting. If it's a painting of candy and Snapple, I'm going to scream, he thought bitterly. But to his surprise, nothing happened.

He stood in front of the now blue picture frame, willing it to show him the next clue. Something. Anything. He ran back over everything he had seen so far, checked the bottoms of the drawers, opened the hole punch, and felt around the cushion of the tiny chair. He smashed the printer against the wall and found only plastic pieces and some glitter. He even ate the candy bar and drank the Snapple, and checked the fact under the cap.

The first nude, bondage photographs of the art of Shibari (or Kinbaku) were published in the August, 1952 edition of the Japanese adult magazine Kitan Club.

The man walked over to the keypad and tried entering 1952. The buzz of the alarm signaling the invalid entry sounded extra mocking.

He looked back over the notes, muttering to himself. "Everything you need has been supplied. Search every nook and cranny. Hold onto your ass."

If you get stuck, just take a deep breath and let your inner voice guide you.

Standing up, he walked back over to the blue frame. He willed himself to calm down and closed his eyes. He took deep breaths in and out, listening for whatever his captors meant by "inner voice." He heard the hum of the fluorescent lights and the sound of his own breathing. Then, underneath the hum, he thought he heard something else. It didn't sound like his voice, but it sounded like a voice. Then the sounds multiplied into dozens of different voices, all speaking at once from very far away. He tried to make out the words.

...would have solved it by now...

...can't wait to see how...

...so cute when he gets angry like that...

...shoulda been a chick...

...how didn't he feel metal in his underwear right away?...

...I wanna meet the contestants already, geeze...

"This is supposed to be helpful?" he said aloud. "I'm stuck, so tell me, what do you want me to do?"

...

...

...

Open Your Eyes.

The man opened his eyes, and in front of him, in the blue frame on the wall, he saw a figure. He watched it, as it watched him, and then he realized what it was.

A mirror.

The man saw...

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Click the link above to complete a survey about our mysterious master!- Vee